


through the unfinished looking glass

by childrenbehave



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:50:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4977796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childrenbehave/pseuds/childrenbehave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few snapshots to some AUs we never got a chance to finished. There is actually a file called "Five AUs We Aren't Actually Writing" like we saw the writings of the wall and knew we'd never finish them.</p><p>1 - Immortals/Highlander<br/>2 - Mystical Pirates<br/>3 - Kidfic<br/>4 - Rich Kids/Gossip Girl<br/>5 - An RST Tour Life</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lasts a thousand years [a highlander au]

**Author's Note:**

> so basically and amnesty/wip post fic. bc why not. let us free, they said!

_today_

Harry went to the Isle of Mull once. It was only sunny the one day, but it was a pretty little place, and he’d been as warmed by the single malt whiskey as by the fire in his rented cottage. 

He’d called it a cottage. The local Scottish people, he was sure, had called _him_ plenty of other things in Gaelic. 

The philosophy text he’d produced in those two weeks had received a few kind notices. Nothing life-changing, thank God, but a few nice words, and even a stub in the Edinburgh Review. Enough that Liam had sent him a letter that had begged him not to do any readings in pubs, at least not until they were there to watch and drink. 

There had been little chance of that, as discreet as they had to be. 

Looking at the bustling town among the lakes, Harry turns around and gets back in the car. He’s not going to find what he needs in Mullingar, despite the echo in the name. 

It’s a couple of hours drive to the coast and by the time he gets there, it’s raining, and not even the kind Harry finds inspiring, just a weak drizzle that soaks through his coat. Harry drives until he sees a familiar name (Drogheda, they snuck around a siege there once, sometime in the seventeenth century). He hits his head off the back of the car seat as the sun sets and the pub lights flicker on in the distance - because his phone is on _edge, really?_ \- and tracks down something claiming to be a condo with a sea view. 

The owners think he’s mad when he phones and says he’s just down the road. 

He supposes it’s not the most inaccurate thing he’s been called this century. 

**

_tomorrow_

Of course, the owners send out a lackey. Harry’s all right with that. The lackey will have keys and know how to turn on the lights and the kettle. Those are his exact priorities, in that order. 

A hell of a noise cuts through the damp squibs of rain hitting the grass all around. It’s a whooping sound, and Harry tenses, because he’s heard his share of battle cries. Except. 

A pale figure is skipping down the hill like an actual hellion. From what Harry can see through the narrow gap between his beanie pulled down low and his collar tugged up high, this idiot is in a vest top and singing at the top of his lungs. Harry laughs, because if he’s mad, he doesn’t know what this merry fucker might be. 

‘All right, mate?’ 

The smudge of darkness snaps and a grinning blonde is in front of Harry on the condo porch. His eyes are huge in the headlights and he’s actually, seriously, wearing a vest top, one that cuts indecently low. Harry’s first instinct is to shake him. His second is to wrap him up in Harry’s own damp coat. His third is to apologise to Liam for the _next_ five hundred years, if this is how he feels all the time. 

‘They think you’re right mad, coming out here tonight, but you might as well, it’s sitting empty and you’d be kipping in your car otherwise, am I right?’ the stranger says, shaking out his hair like a dog on the porch and shoving it back with one hand. Keys miraculously appear in his hand and Harry can see now that he’s taller, but not by as much as he’d thought at first. 

‘Aren’t you freezing, you mad bastard?’ 

Harry’s never had the knack of keeping his mouth shut and apparently, it’s not something he’s acquiring with age. 

‘Nice to meet you,’ the other man wipes his hand on his jeans - as if they’re any drier than the rest of him - and holds out his hand. ‘I’m Niall.’

‘Harry,’ Harry answers, because it seems the thing to do. 

There’s a jolt of static when they shake hands, and they both look to the sky. The rain is finally beginning to fall in earnest and the distant sea blurs into the gathering clouds. 

‘Finally,’ Niall says, dropping Harry’s hand and grinning at the sky as the heavens open, ‘I’ve been waiting on a proper storm all winter.’

 

*

Normally Louis wouldn’t answer the phone during such an important session of distracting Liam, but it’s Harry’s personalised ring tone - really, how the world has changed - and they haven’t heard from their Hazza in a few days. This is rare because Harry has had his fingers attached to keypads since just before the bloody things were invented. Qwerty might even be his fault, because he thought it sounded ‘cute.’ 

‘My darling Harold how are those filthy rebels treating you?’

He’s prepared for many things, Louis is. Surprises don’t really happen to someone as old as him anymore, but leave it to Harry. 

‘LOUIS! It’s Niall! We met in a pub and there was a cliff-- he went off a cliff! And died! But not really because he’s immortal and I don’tknowwhattodo!’ Harry’s never spoken so fast in his life, which would be worrying enough except there’s another word tucked in there that has Louis’s blood running cold. He can feel Liam shift where he is because he’s clearly sensed something is not right. Louis tries to make his voice even when he speaks next, carefully not looking at Liam’s face. 

‘What _kind_ of Immortal, Haz?’

At that Liam is immediately at his side, pressing their cheeks together so he can hear Harry too. Louis fumbles for speaker phone. Harry is babbling, words tripping over each other and Louis can picture his face as if Harry was in front of them.

‘Kind... New! The new kind. He was _alive_ two hours ago, Lou, proper alive with a blue plaster on his hand and everything. He... he was buzzing but it was like... all muted and the weather was so bad I wasn’t even sure because I’ve never met another pre- He was _alive_ and it’s different now, but he’s not dead. He was alive and there was a storm and a cliff and I didn’t know... I did CPR! I didn’t know what-’

And as sad as it is this boy died, Louis lets out a breath. He’s glad that it wasn’t somebody else that Harry came across - someone who had already died once. Someone who would see Harry and see a prize. They keep away from The Game. Zayn has called it many names over the years in many languages, but all of the meanings circle back to something like: _bullshit_. And Louis knows Harry is good with a sword, Liam and Zayn have made sure of that, but Harry isn’t a fighter in the strictest sense of the word. Survivor, their Hazza is.

‘You did fine, Harry,’ Liam’s cheek moves against Louis’s and Louis looks down to where he’s gripping Liam’s hand. He’s not sure when he reached out for Liam, but their fingers are threaded together and Harry is fine. 

‘And you thought that Liam’s first aid classes would be useless.’

And Louis knows how shaken Harry is, he does, because he died before Harry, and then he found Harry. It seems to be the way of it with them. 

Harry laughs, a bit broken but voice more settled than before. ‘I didn’t... I mean, it’s not my fault is it, that he’s-’

‘You know it doesn’t work that way.’

‘Yeah,’ Louis hears Harry’s deep breath, ‘ _yeah_.’ Harry’s voice comes in softer now, ‘I brought him back to mine, he’s...’ he trails off and Louis knows Harry is running his hand through his hair and biting his lips and trying to figure out the right words to make all of this right. Louis squeezes Liam’s hand. 

‘We’ll be there tomorrow, love,’ Louis says.

Liam nods and squeezes back, leaning forward, ‘Just talk to him-’

‘Niall. His name is Niall.’

‘Right, Niall. Just answer his questions as best you can, you know everything, and we’ll be there tomorrow. And Haz?’

There’s a silence, and Liam and Louis look between each other, ripples in Liam’s jaw. Louis knows what Liam wants to say, what Zayn would have already said, what won’t even have occurred to Harry yet. . 

‘Get your sword out of your car, yeah?’

Harry is silent for a beat that Liam and Louis stare at each other. Harry, as old as he is, is the youngest among them. Died the youngest, too. He’s seen death but the First Death is always something that sticks, even just as a witness. 

‘Thanks, lads, just. Thanks.’ 

‘Love you, Hazza,’

‘Stay safe, love.’

‘Love you, too. I’ll... see you tomorrow. Bye.’

He and Liam stare at the screen when the call goes and then look at each other. Louis lets out a breath, a mixture of worry and relief, and closes his eyes. Harry. Their Harry just found himself his first baby Immortal in Ireland of all places where he skipped off to try and be ‘a normal lad on holiday’. Only their Harry. 

Liam’s hand come up and settle on Louis’s shoulder, rubbing gently, and Louis feels the last edges of tension drop. He looks up and has to smile at the situation. Liam smiles back and Louis can see the same relief in his eyes. They move in for the hug at the same time and Louis breathes against Liam’s neck. 

‘Only Harry.’

Liam laughs, ‘Only Harry.’ 

Louis leans back and presses their foreheads together. ‘I’ll get the plane tickets.’

‘I’ll call Zayn.’

*

‘You’ve a sword,’ Niall says, staring at the, well, sword.

Harry shrugs, lips curling and taps his fingers to a beat on the sheath where the _sword_ is resting in his lap. ‘Yeah, I do. It’s kinda required.’

‘Required?’ 

‘Yeah, it’s kinda a long story, and it’s not all mine.’

Niall figured as much already, you know, considering the whole coming back from the dead thing and how in his mind Harry’s presence has a bit of a... buzz isn’t the right word, because it’s not like he’s hearing it. It’s more of sense. A hum of awareness about Harry that wasn’t there before. 

‘Right.’ Niall sits up and bites at his thumbnail. He and Harry stare at each other for a beat and then: ‘Are you tapping out Blitzkrieg Bop?’

Harry’s eyes go to his lap where his fingers are still tapping away and smiles at them like he hadn’t even notice. He then laughs and when he looks back at Niall his eyes are bright like they were when they first shook hands, the shadows from the last few hours gone. 

‘You like the Ramones?’

Niall nods, because yeah he does and well, why lie. ‘Yeah, love them.’

‘Wicked. They were so great.’

‘Yeah, I wish I could have seen them in concert.’

And Niall doesn’t know why that’s so funny except Harry is now laughing like he’s told the best joke ever. It takes him almost two whole minutes to stop and Niall just stares at him through it all. 

‘Why was that so funny?’

Harry giggles - actually fucking giggles - and the sword (fuck, why the fuck is there a bleeding sword around?) gets put on the coffee table. ‘Oh man, Niall, you don’t even know.’

‘Obviously.’ And Niall’s a pretty mellow lad. He takes things as they come but suddenly things like death and swords and cliffs and how he’s somehow alive even though he remembers dying are taking up too much space in his chest and head and... well, everyone has a breaking point. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

Harry blinks, slow like he’s underwater, and then his eyes go a bit sharp. Like the edges of a broken wine bottle before the soften again and he leans back in his chair. 

‘Yeah, _yeah_. I guess I should,’ he says, ‘Zayn tells it the best but... yeah, you should know what happened to you. What you are. What we are.’

Niall swallows, trying not to focus on the ominous edge in Harry’s voice. ‘And what are we?’

**

_a thought_

Death is something Harry hates. His was quick, a surprise, and he hated it. Hated dying. It caught him by off guard and hates that. Hates that it came so quickly and sharply for him. He’s always loved being an Immortal because it felt like he was saying ‘fuck you’ to death. It felt like he got a second chance to do everything he wanted and then do even more. Live even longer. Live even better. 

But then he learned that death follows all Immortals. People unlike them are taken by it - people like his mother and his sister - and people like them fight over it. He’s only had a few duels within the Game; Liam watches out for all of them and most want to fight him anyway, but he’s fought. He’s won, obviously, and the Quickening bites like death did (at least to him) and he hates it. 

He knows he’s lucky, too. To have been found by Louis, to have Liam watch out for them, to have _Zayn_ who feels older than time and history half the time and as see the world evolve. They’ve taken care of him, let him live as freely as he wishes and have kept the sharp edges of swords away. And sometimes he fears the days that one of them might leave him. That one day another Immortal will come who’s better than Liam or Zayn, or even of a Dark Quickening taking over one of them, as absurd as it sounds, and thing is he doesn’t know where he’ll be then. 

He’s lived so long and he’s never been alone. He never wishes to be. 

Louis let go of religion a long time ago, but sometimes Harry still prays to who, he’s not sure anymore, but he prays for them. That none of them feel death again. Death felt like loneliness. Harry hates it.

 

**

_a thought sometime in the past_

Harry is Paris, but kinder. Falls in love just as fast though.

Zayn once thought Liam an Achilles, even though they met when he was bloodied and left on the field, but the centuries have shown Zayn that Liam would have been a well-met brother in arms of Hector. It amazes Zayn that enough time away from those sands can show him both edges of the sword in one of the men he’s loved best in all of his years. 

He’d thought at the time: what ill luck for Achilles, and ill fate for Hector, to take the field on opposing sides. 

Liam was born later, even if he died in battle just the same, but in him Zayn sometimes thinks he sees the balance those two men made myth could have reached. 

**

_the past_

Zayn keeps Louis in Paris while Liam fights. 

It doesn’t kill Zayn to split them so, but it sends a deep ache through the very heart of him. He knows better than to believe the whole world is at war, the way the wireless keeps saying, no matter which language he turns it to. There must be a corner untouched by the war; in all the glorious curves of the world, there must be one. Zayn knows that if it weren’t for Liam, if it weren’t for Louis and Harry, he could find it for himself. If they weren’t so unalterably themselves, they could leave and find such an eye in the storm - and such a storm it is - for them all. 

As it stands, Zayn walks the streets near the mosque in Paris. He keeps Louis and Harry in Paris almost against their will, working petty humanitarian scams for the greater good, to bring sweets to children when sugar is scarce. He keeps them there to slip in and out of resistance meetings and boats, guarding those headed to safety.

The thing is: Zayn has seen too much of human hatred to allow them further behind enemy lines. For all they have lived, and all they’ve _died,_ all of them, over and over, Louis and Harry haven’t been exposed to the world’s unkindness - not like Liam, who fights and rails against it still, not like Zayn, who protects what Liam fights for in his stead. 

*

Louis was drunk when they met him. Drunk and spouting some winding tale, his drink sloshing out of his cup. He’d been drunk but entertaining and you couldn’t look away from him when he started speaking. Liam couldn’t at any rate, even as strange and loud he found Louis too used to Zayn’s steady and generally peaceful company for so long. Even as used to the ever-changing world as he was there had been something about Louis and his voice, how it dipped and rose during his tale, how bright and sharp his eyes seemed even with the drink in him. Louis had been an explosion of sound and colour like the ones they had seen in China last time they crossed the continent.

It hadn’t even been the buzz that drew them to him, though it surrounded Louis like the echo of a fly buzzing in a room that you couldn’t see. Normally they avoided other Immortals; it was a messy, deadly game most played and they did not bother with it unless challenged. Even then Liam would take the challenges even when most wanted to fight Zayn. But Liam had vowed long ago that Zayn would never have to raise his sword if he did not want to.

They hadn’t run from Louis though. 

Maybe it was because he crept up on them, catching them off guard, barreling into a pub already half drunk and singing.

Maybe it was how his grin sharpened when he first saw them but kept singing.

Either way they hadn’t run from Louis. Louis barrelled into their lives and they had caught him on the upswing. He slotted himself into their lives, a puzzle piece filling a space they hadn’t even know was waiting. 

**

_sometime later, after everything is done and there’s more to come_

It’s funny, Louis come to think, how they’ve never felt incomplete until they find another. He thinks about how it had been him, Liam, and Zayn for so long and while the strains of the wars Liam kept throwing himself to made him ache and pressed down on Zayn’s heart Liam always came home and they would fold into themselves again. Then Harry came, bright and idealistic and so alive. 

Harry came and he had folded in too. Brought with him a bits and pieces they all needed. He even them out, smoothed so of the edges that had been growing rougher with age.

Louis looks at Niall and feels something similar to when he first watched Harry grin at Liam, teasing him about how he would train him or saw Harry and Zayn roll their eyes at their book in unison. Niall’s watching Liam and Zayn with stars in his eyes as they spar to show him what it means to be able to survive when a Game Player enters their life. He’s also grinning at Harry when Harry drapes himself over his shoulder and pokes his cheek, whispering probably inaccurate commentary and it’s like something has settled in the air around them.

There’s not a lot that’s deeper than what Louis knows he has with Liam, but if there’s depths left for them to find, he thinks this is it, the five of them, and they’re as helpless in the face of it as a Quickening. There’s the five of them, and they’ve settled like an ache, like the muscles in his shoulders rolling down at last: like _enough._

Somehow Louis knows they won’t find another. 

If they play their own game, they’ve gathered. Now they’re playing for keeps.


	2. beneath the seas [a pirates au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘It’s hardly something they’re telling a disreputable bunch of brigands who probably have knives for hands. They’ll be lucky if they aren’t killed in their sleep.’ EVERYTHING IS PIRATES! Sea prince Liam and pirate Louis and their three loyal fools. Oh and if you’re wonder just how AU this is: Zayn can swim. [ZAYN WAS STILL HERE I'M WEEPING]

*

Later, after everything, when there’s no more lies and secrets and danger, Niall will laugh and go on about fate, magic, and such things. Harry will be full of questions and Zayn will only shrug and _not_ apologise at all for all the secrets and lies. Liam and Louis however will just look at each other and smile.

That's all _much_ later, of course.

*

When he was little his mother told Louis he was a gift from the sea. When he’s older he figures out what that means, that his father left him in his mother’s belly and he sailed away never to come back. By then Louis is already in love with the vast spread of blue that sparkles just beyond the cliffs. He dreams of it, the blue, what lies beyond, what lies beneath. He soaks up stories from the sailors that pass by the pub, dreams of living out there, having a ship of his own. Exploring the world.

Anything would be better than the small village he and his mother live in, where everyone whispers about them. About the man that loved and left his mother, ‘pirate’ they whisper and look at Louis with disdain in their eyes. His mother just tells him they’re jealous because the sea doesn’t sing to them, humming in their blood like it does in Louis. And when he’s old enough to really, _really_ understands what they all mean he doesn't care. If the only thing his father gave him was his love of the sea, then Louis will take it. His mother is right. The sea does sing to Louis, fills his dreams. One day maybe he’ll be able to sing back.

*

The sand is hot on his back is the first thing he feels. A strange sensation all around. The sand. It’s hot and it’s dry and it’s coating his lips as the heavy winds blow it across his face. His back aches and the next sensation takes over. 

Pain, overwhelming pain. He can’t help but cry out even before remembers he needs to be more careful now.

Liam can’t breath through it. He hates air and chokes on it. It’s too light on his lungs, he gulps it in and chokes on it, coughing. That’s when the third sensation comes. Hands; cool, damp hands rubbing slow circles across his shoulder and a voice. 

‘Slower breathes, slower.’ It’s Zayn. Oh thank the tides it’s Zayn. That Zayn made it out with him. Liam blinks and looks up. The sun is so bright and he’s not used to it. He has to blink again. Zayn’s worried face crowds his vision and... maybe it’s Liam that made it out with Zayn. He tries to move and his back hurts. Zayn slips his hand lower and steadies Liam. 

‘You’ve been hurt,’ Zayn says and there’s a cool dripping over the pain and then some blessed numbness. ‘I’ve been treating it with weaver fish and sea cucumbers.’

Liam grits his teeth and nods, ‘Thank you, Zayn.’

Zayn helps him sit up and settles in front of Liam. His eyes are tinted red with tiredness and his mouth looks like he’s been biting it. Immediately Liam understands: Zayn had thought Liam might die. Liam reaches out and covers his friend’s hand. ‘ _Thank you_ , Zayn.’ 

‘Anything for you,’ and Liam hates how true that is because Zayn followed him when he had the choice to stay. Zayn _saved_ Liam when it looked like they weren’t going to make it out and now because of Liam Zayn can’t go back home. 

Liam sighs, gingerly looking around to where Zayn brought them to and blinks at the wide expanse of ocean and sky. It’s so different. So bright. Liam squints up at the sun and has to close his eyes after a second. It’s heat feels like brand on his skin. 

‘So where’d you bring us to?’ he asks.

Zayn shrugs, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, ‘I’m not sure, actually. It was the closest place I could find to treat you, however.’

Liam nods. 

‘It’s deserted, I think, the island, which serves our purposes until you’re healed then we might need to start figuring out how to get on one of those ships.’ The fact that Zayn sounds excited about this should worry Liam, but Zayn was always reading, always learning about everything in and out their realm even when he should have been training with the other squires and knights under oath to protect Liam, a fat lot of good that did them. 

‘Everyone at home is counting on me, Zayn,’ he breathes out thinking of home, of all that were left. His eyes feel all misty and he squeezes them shut, trying not to let the tears out. He doesn’t think he does a good job of it as he feels Zayn’s hand on his shoulder, silent and comforting, steady as the sound of the waves on the shore. 

‘On us, but yes,’ Zayn says, and then softer, ‘They couldn’t ask for anyone better. You - we - can do this.’ Liam’s not sure he believes that. Not sure he deserves the faith that Zayn has in him when right now it’s only him and Zayn and hot sand and too many against them. But he has to believe in something and why not Zayn’s words. 

*

‘Damnit, Harold!’ Louis shouts, ducking the incoming swing of a sword. The pub has exploded into a flurry of clashing swords, thrown mugs, and broken chair around them. Louis would like to say it’s an unexpected occurrence in his life, but... that would be a lie. 

Ever since he left England, sneaking aboard a Irish frigate three weeks after his nineteenth birthday his life has been liberally filled with unexpected violence, unexpected friendships, and unexpected turn of events, which that’s not even taking into account the mutiny and bet in which he won the ship.

Needless to say, his life on the high seas is everything he dream off and more. 

Except. 

Sometimes a bloke just wants a pint and maybe for a simple plan not to be completely bollocksed. 

Harry, dealing with his own opponent, pouts (pouts! In the middle of a fight!) over his shoulder, ‘It’s not my fault this time! Promise!’ He’s tall and lanky enough that wide swing of his sword has the man charging at him ducking and cursing as he stumbles over a stool and knocks his head on a table leg. Louis doesn’t know where Harry gets his luck, but not for the first time he’s glad for it. Harry would probably be dead otherwise and Louis would be without a best mate _and first mate_. 

‘I don’t believe you!’ Louis shouts back, because really, he know better by now, but also as often as trouble comes into their lives there’s usually a reason for it. Usually. Speaking off, Louis turns and drops his shoulder sending the man that had been rushing towards him, dagger out, over the same shoulder when he connects with Louis. Really, yelling out before you attack someone only lets them know where you’re coming from. 

Holding out his cutlass, he eyes Harry, who is walking backwards towards Louis. When their backs bump they eye the five men who are now surrounding them. Louis can only hope their unplanned distraction isn’t mucking up the rest of the plan. 

‘Well, it’s entirely possible that there was a misunderstanding in my translation of ‘wife’ and ‘woman friend’,’ Harry says, and Louis groans. Of course. 

‘What language?’

Harry grins over his shoulder, again, and really he should be looking at the _men coming at him and Louis with their swords_ instead of at Louis. ‘French.’

Which... would also explain the very rude language being shouted at their way. Now, really, Harry is a flirt, but he’s very respectful of all his admirers, female and male alike. There’s no need for that. Harry’s a very nice lad for a pirate. 

Louis snorts and grins at the men coming at them, ‘Well, you can’t blame him, the words do sound alike, especially when drunk,’ he says in French. Their companions don’t seem to appreciate of his trying to rectify the situation. 

He didn’t really think they were going to.

They all yell again, and _really_ , all their yelling does is make Louis tense up for some action. Of course, Harry is yelling and lunging forward too, mad grin on his face like it’s the best thing that’s happened all day, and Louis would worry about that, but he’s too busy raising his sword. The clash of metal rings out across the pub, sounding just about the sounds of broken glass and yells. 

He and Harry are good swordsmen. They’ve had to learn to be, had to learn to count on each other and and know when the other is blocking a strike or aiming a blow. They move around each other like habit and know how to protect each other best. They know all of the others move because it was from each other they learnt how to wield a sword. It’s rare they’re met with a challenge in battle.

These men do not present a challenge, thankfully. 

There’s one, however, who’s crowding Harry with his swings and speed and Louis knows that if it was one-on-one or even better two-on-one (odds to Louis and Harry, of course) they’d be fine, but it’s five-on-two and Louis worrying about Harry now. Harry doesn’t mind a brawl but Harry swings too wide sometimes, leaves his right side open too used to Louis to be there to cover him.

When the shots ring out, everyone ducks. A glass shatters and a piece of wood splinters, the wood cracking and as another shot sounds the beam falls, hitting two of their five aggressors. 

Niall’s loud laugh follows the sounds of the bodies hitting the floor and Louis looks over to where Niall’s beaming face is poking in from the pub’s doorway.

‘Come on now, lads, we don’t have all day!’ He spinning one of the many revolvers he carries on his person idly around his fingers. 

Louis grins. Oh thank the Lord for Niall. ‘Did you get it?’

Niall laughs, ‘Did you doubt me?’ He stopping the spinning of the revolver then and pointing it towards Louis. Neither blink when the round goes off and there’s the sound of a body falling behind them. Louis is not even sure Niall was aiming properly, but Niall is another who possesses a strange sort of luck. He never misses a shot. This makes it two against two and from the sound of the groan he just heard... oh. Two against one, just like Louis likes it. He turns just as the other man - the good one, the one that worried Louis - lunges towards Harry just as Harry parries and Louis slides up near Harry’s side and they both move at the same time. 

A person can survive a sword wound, even a bad, but Louis doubt any one person can survive two sword wounds, especially considering the blood the twin wounds are releasing. 

The man drops when they pull out their swords and around them the pub has gone silent. Not that many people are left, but the few that remain look at Louis, Harry and Niall as they would gods or monsters; they stay still and say nothing. 

Harry grins as he sheaths his rapier. It’s a large grin that makes his eyes gleam. ‘Well, that was unplanned.’

Louis frowns, ‘Really, “femme”?’ He looks at the bodies they’ve left. Death. It’s not Louis’s favourite things to have to learned, but sometimes. 

He sighs.

‘She really didn’t seem to like him.’ Harry looks apologetic and suddenly sad, like he just realised what they’ve just done. It would scare Louis how quickly Harry can change like that if he didn’t know Harry. He watches as Harry bends down and close the eyes of the man they just killed. Then the eyes of the man Niall shot. Louis turns back to where Niall was and is incredibly unsurprised to see that’s he’s got a leftover pint in hand and is chugging it hard.

‘Did you really get it, Nialler?’

Niall stops drinking and wipes his mouth with his foreman. ‘Of course I did.’ Harry bounces up to Niall and takes the pint, finishing it, and Louis can’t help but notice his pockets look a bit fuller than before. Oh, Harry, always one for trinkets. 

‘Good, because I don’t believe we’ll be welcomed in this fine establishment again.’ Louis waves toward the broken chairs and tables and glasses surrounding them.

Harry and Niall look at each other and then Niall laughs out loud, ‘Barkeep! Barkeep!’

Louis cocks a brow, because who would have stayed behind? 

A man rises from behind the bar, a musket in hand. Smart man. He looks between the three of them. He starts to say something but Niall cuts him off, reaching into his deep pockets and puckling out... Bloody hell, Niall. 

Niall tosses two small gold coins towards the barkeep, who Louis suspects catches them more out of instinct than want. He blinks at what he’s just caught and stares back at them. Louis struggles to roll his eyes. Between Harry and Niall he’s almost sure they get rid of more treasure than they steal. Harry is already heading out the door.

‘For you trouble and any that we have caused,’ Niall says, followed by one of ridiculous good luck sayings in Gaelic, winks at Louis, and leaves. The bar still looks a minor war zone but the barkeep is smiling, they got what they came for, and nobody is calling for the help. Sometimes Louis is very glad for whatever luck Niall and Harry have. Laughing, Louis eyes a forgotten coat - a soft, warm looking cut of dark leather - and slips it on shucking off his old one that’s been looking worse for the wear especially after this fight.

It’s a good fit, maybe a bit tight around the shoulders, but nice. It’ll do. 

He reaches into the pockets and grins. A nice little bag that jingles like it’s full of coins brushes his fingers. 

It’s amazing what people leave behind in their coats. 

*

Back on the ship he, Harry and Niall slip into his captain’s quarters and Niall pulls out what they had been distracting a pub full of french privateers for.

Louis grins at his two best mates. 

‘Excellently done, lads.’

*

Zayn gets an earring in the port. Liam stops laughing after a minute, when he sees the storefront that Zayn has stopped in front of. 

‘No,’ Liam says, sharply, with all of the weight of the royal command he’s never used so much before this week.

Which Zayn ignores so thoroughly as only those born in the same storm can do. ‘They’ll never let us on without one. Maybe two.’

‘They?’ Liam looks at Zayn and breathes through his mouth to lessen the scent of salt water, so close to the docks. It makes him ache to be on water again. It doesn’t help. ‘I thought you hadn’t looked.’ 

‘I looked a bit. I didn’t mean to,’ Zayn replies, then rolls his eyes. ‘You were making fast friends with the trough after all of those two hardy sea ales ailed you. I tripped over a pirate in the street, because he’d made similar acquaintance with the gutter.’

Liam frowns and nods. Zayn knows he doesn’t always keep up when Zayn’s being especially roundabout, but he gets the gist, and Liam appreciates that he doesn’t slow down for him or make him feel like an idiot. 

‘He’d lost his ridiculous shirt in the tavern, apparently, and his chest was-’ Zayn coughs, then straightens his shoulders. Liam conceals a smile. It wouldn’t do to tease Zayn when Zayn is the only one of them to properly have his land legs under him. ‘Well, I’ve seen more improper designs, but rarely on flesh.’ 

Liam casts an eye at the door of the tattoo shop and shakes his head. ‘It’s not a very temporary disguise.’ 

‘No, that’s what the eyepatch is for,’ Zayn answers, pushing him inside through the rough wooden door, and Liam would think he was joking, but he has this feeling that he isn’t. ‘Also, my liege,’ Zayn hisses against his ear, ‘if we don’t succeed, this isn’t a very _temporary_ exile.’

Liam can’t argue with that. 

Zayn has his grandfather’s name, long passed from them now, scrolled on his arm in the language of his father’s people. He looks unpanicked by the inking on his bare skin, not as though he’s thinking, like Liam was, of how the court will react when they return. (Because they will, they’ll save _everyone,_ they must.) The heart on his hip he chooses not to explain to Liam, except to say that it serves their purposes. Liam watches, and notes that Zayn does not hesitate: as though he has been thinking about this for far longer than the fall of the city. 

Liam considers, again, what those who work most closely with his family give up. 

He thinks of the empty city ringed by guards that are not their own. He gets an arrow on his forearm for the northern currents, pointing to their people’s refuge, and as a reminder of what’s at stake. 

He is somewhat unprepared for their next appointment. 

*

‘More disguise?’ Liam asks, raising an eyebrow at Zayn. 

Zayn shrugs. ‘They’d be fine with my hair, especially after this bit turns blonde with this stuff in it. But yours looks like it’s never seen daylight, too dark against your skin.’

Liam hates how much of a point Zayn has; his hair had barely seen daylight before the exile, because he _lived underwater_. It made sense, but it’s hardly something they’re telling a disreputable bunch of brigands who probably have knives for hands. They’ll be lucky if they aren’t killed in their sleep.

‘They’re not going to recognise us when we get back,’ Liam grumbles, trying to resist the urge to pull his sleeve down over the ink on his arm. It’s bad enough he has to wear a shirt all the time, but apparently, only as far as his arms, and what’s the point of that? ‘It’s hardly proper.’ 

‘Shut up and sit,’ Zayn says, shoving Liam down on the barrel. ‘I’m going to cut off your hair now.’

Somewhere between the battle for the city and sitting on a stinking barrel in an alley in a seaside landwalker town, Liam’s life took a strange turn, and his curls tickle his nose as they fall to the stones. 

*

They’ll need transportation. 

Liam hates thinking about it. 

Hates ships really, most of them feel awkward and wrong and they usually mean shoes and Liam it’s bad enough that they have to walk around these two and pretend they from here when all Liam dreams about his home and pulse of the tides. 

Zayn’s kicking his feet where they’re sitting on the low pier. Liam grins when he realises an array of fish have gathered around. He rubs at the new markings on his skin. Look at one of the ones on Zayn’s arm. 

The face is staring back is familiar. 

The tail more so. 

Many landwalkers get a mermaid tattoo and most get it wrong. They miss the sharp little teeth or neck gills or how their breast are not bound or covered by shells - shells, really, _landwalkers_ \- but are bare and their edges shimmer with scales that crawl up their ribcages. Zayn’s depiction doesn’t miss any of that and gets very specific in some instances; the hair is dead giveaway. Liam wonders how she’ll feel when she sees Zayn’s declaration wrapped around his bicep.

Mermaids are territorial and very rarely let themselves be courted. They mark you, not the other way around and Liam knows Zayn hasn’t been marked. Can’t be really, not with his first loyalty to the city and Liam himself. 

Except now he is. The mark still a bit bloody and dark against his skin.

Liam has his own marks now too, he supposes. Marks he’s chosen for himself. He was never meant to be anything special. Only keep the city going, his people going. Just one more in the long line of his family and now...

He looks out at the harbour full of ships.

‘So how are we getting on one of those?’ He kicks his feet in the water and drops down into the small dingy that they’ve stolen and hitched to the side of the pier. Never before had Liam stolen anything before, he’s not sure how he feels about how much he’s had to steal since the exile. He stretches out and drops one arm overboard into the water.

Zayn leans back on the pier, eyes closing already. They should probably head somewhere else to sleep, but everywhere else is too far from the feel of the sea. 

‘Don’t worry, Li. I have an idea for that.’ 

‘That does not reassure me,’ he says but Zayn is already snoring. Liam sighs and looks up at the moon, it’s getting fuller, thicker, and the tides are growing with it. It will be full in a few days, Liam feels it in the water as he drags his fingers through it.

*

Louis can’t sleep. 

He stares out of his window and stares at the waxing moon. 

Under his feet the ship rocks, steady and sure, but there’s something in the movement of the ship on the water. He’s not sure what, but it’s something. 

Frowning out the window, he catches sight of of how the water splashes against the ship and how the water moves against it. There’s nothing new in it, except.

He feels he’s being pulled somewhere and Louis has never liked the feeling of someone telling him what he should be doing.

**

(a flash forward)

Louis never thought he’d die at sea. Well, that’s not exactly true. He thought he’d conquer the seas before he died on his ship, old and maybe a bit of a legend. Not like this, with sea water burning through his throat and nose like a cold fire and his limbs weighed down by the irons and ropes he became tangled in.

He supposes he should be less calm about the whole thing, but he blue swallowing him up is so lovely and he’s loved the sea so long. 

Maybe it is fitting he dies at sea. 

Maybe this was how it was all meant to happen. 

He thinks about his ship and his crew and how he hopes they all survive the attack seeing as he probably not. He hopes Harry doesn’t break at the weight of becoming captain and that Niall doesn’t blame himself. He hopes this gained him some of Zayn’s trust back. And that after Zayn feels horribly guilty because Louis isn’t that nice of a person and he hadn’t know what it meant to… He can’t further on that. It only reminds him of Liam and the look in his eyes and if he thinks of Liam the last breath in his body will escape him and maybe it already is.

The water is so so blue but it’s no longer warm; it’s cold and getting colder and Liam will probably blame himself even though this is all Louis’s fault. Still he hopes Liam stops looking so worried and scared and—

That’s Liam he sees slicing through the water. The water makes him blurry to Louis but he can tell it’s Liam. The tattoos on his arm - for the north current, Liam mumbled low once - dark and cutting through the blue and then he’s right there and Louis’s mouth open and water goes in and suddenly Liam’s mouth is covering his and well this isn’t the rescue he imagined (he didn’t imagine one at all) and then there’s breath in his lungs again and oh— right, not a kiss. Air. Liam’s giving him air and Louis almost pushes him away because he shouldn’t be saving Louis at all. 

But Liam isn’t paying attention to Louis’s hands, hand grasping the chains that have tangled around Louis’s legs and pulls. 

They snap. Louis think he can hear the muted break of metal even in the deep water and that’s… 

He blinks and his eyes snap up to Liam. Liam isn’t looking at him he’s sweeping and arm out and suddenly the debris of the ship scatters around him under the power of whatever his arm just did and before Louis can lose more air gapping, Liam mouth presses against his again and this time it’s different. He still feels the air Liam’s pushed into his body but now he can concentrate on the feel of Liam’s mouth and he can’t help himself. He sweeps his tongue in, chasing salt and sea and air in Liam’s mouth and Liam kisses him back hard, deep and desperate, before he pulls away and pinches his fingers over Louis’s nose, gives him air once more and clamps his large hand over Louis’s mouth.

One arm closes around Louis’s waist and the other pump through the water.

Louis gets it: stop wasting it. And really, Liam shouldn’t have this much air to give, Louis thinks. However he decides the question he can’t help but think can wait until Liam is done pulling them back to the surface. 

Louis’s lung still burn, trying to keep his gifted air in, but Liam doesn’t seem to struggle at all.  
When they break the surface Louis gulps all the air he can, spits out the salt water the waves around them spill into his mouth and he can hear Liam breath out next to him. 

Louis coughs, inhales air and turns in the water. His legs feel heavy, like the chains are still around them and Liam is really the reason they’re still afloat. Liam with his worried brown eyes and wet bottom lip and—

‘You can breathe underwater!’ Louis exclaims in between coughs and Liam’s face does a complicated thing with too many emotions for Louis to catch except one.  
Fear.

And that just won’t do, because Liam can breath underwater and just saved even after Louis practically betrayed him (and not on purpose, after all this Louis promises to make Liam understand that.) And he in love with him.

So Louis lunges forward and it makes Liam (both of them) sinks down a little the water but Louis doesn’t care, covering Liam’s mouth with his own again. He could do this forever, honestly.

‘You can breathe underwater,’ he mouths against Liam’s lips, sucking on them and loving how the taste like the sea. Louis has always loved the sea.

Liam pulls him tight as the waves around them make them drift and smiles. ‘Yes, about that…’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hilariously we had zayn's mermaid tattoo written before the actual tattoo showed up. that's how long we had this in WIPs.


	3. do it for the kids [kidfic au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Aren’t twins are supposed to skip a generation or something?’ Five (?) accidental dates that two busy and important adults called Louis and Liam go on by accident, while juggling kids, careers and their very pretty, very ridiculous friends. **eta** : more like 7k of one date and 3k of another.

1.

On a Tuesday and a Friday, Louis’s mum arrives at his house sometime during his first cup of tea just before seven, now that his twin sisters are determined to get the bus to school on their own, because who wants their mum taking them to the academy, _god._

Louis bites his lip. He’s seen his sisters in their skirts and shirts. He’s not looking forward to dealing with the the teenage thing at all, but thankfully, that’s a whole decade away. He doesn’t mind shopping. He already knows what Harry would say to _any_ of those thoughts and it’s peals of laughter. Which is fine. Uncles have to help with these things, so take that, Haz. 

Still, he kisses his mum on the cheek and pushes the other cup of tea into her hand. She smiles and nods to the door, and Louis slips out of the house. 

*

His feet slap the pavement in an unsteady rhythm that his ipod drowns out when he pinches the control on the earphone cord. Louis skips past two tracks then makes a mental note to edit the playlist later (he makes this note every morning that he runs and forgets every time). He lands on a remix with a beat drop that squares his shoulders against the wind and a thumping bass beat that makes him forgive Harry’s ridiculous mix all over again. 

Then he doesn’t think much of anything at all. 

Except whether the twins are up yet. Except whether they’re going to be ready for nursery in time. Except. 

A voice in his head that sounds a lot like his mum tells him to hush and Louis exhales an explosion of a breath before inhaling from the water bottle clasped in his left hand. 

He braces and stretches against a streetlight near the park. It’s not dark anymore, but it’s not entirely light either, and everything looks bleached and tinged with red at the edges. The roads are full of crawling cars with headlights on trying to get across the main arteries of the city. Louis thinks it might be chilly, but he’s run enough heat into his muscles sprinting the first half-mile that he can’t tell anymore. 

Louis runs through the open gates of the park at a steadier pace. He waits until the fork down to the water and turns off the wide paved path that’s twinned with the cycle path. If he wanted to queue to exercise, he’d go to the pool and spend more time hovering at the end of a lane than swimming. He wants to _run._

There’s a rough dirt path across the grass that speaks to a whole lot of other people having similar thoughts. It cuts through trees the local school planted twenty-five years before - there’s a weather-beaten noticeboard with a plaque - and back around to the swings and slides by the gates. 

Last night’s rain shakes itself off the leaves and down onto Louis’s face and into his ear. He scowls at the sky as it gets lighter through the trees and tugs his hoodie up, feeling the damp leaves turn to mulch under his heels. He nearly falls a couple of times - once on a stick the leaves hid that could have taken out his eye, once on the slick slide of the leaves. The burn starts in his calves, as per usual, then the knee he’s nearly wrecked a couple of times, and his water bottle is down to a third by the time he pushes through the other side of the trees and back into the green. 

And gets a stick smacking flat against his chest for his trouble. 

‘Okay, get back here, you plonker! Leave the poor man alone!’

It’s colder than Louis thought it was, because his fingers don’t seem to be working as well as they could be as he fumbles to disentangle the stick from his headphones cable. It only hit him for a second: he doesn’t understand how that one stick for that one second has mud all across his hoodie and snagged his earphones in a Gorgon knot he doesn’t feel like cutting, because he only likes running for the first twenty minutes, and after that Harry’s ridiculous playlist gives him life. His music falls to his chest and lets out a tinny _eh-oh, gotta let go_ against his hoodie zip. 

Louis blinks and looks down to see a black and white dog sitting at his feet giving him a death glare. 

‘Um, sorry about that, mate, do you - can I -’

And then Louis looks up into the fucking sun. 

The actual sun, which is rising right into his eyes, but also, a really fit bloke with short hair and brown eyes that remind Louis more of a puppy than the actual puppy at his feet. The puppy at his feet looks remarkably articulate, actually, and is giving him a look that says _what is taking so long with the stick, puny human?_

The human puppy looks contrite, though. Painfully so. He’s waving his hands at Louis’s chest as if he can help with the whole crossed wires situation, or maybe the mud situation, like Louis is a customer in a restaurant, and he’s just spilled red wine on his white dress shirt. 

‘Angry pup you’ve got there,’ Louis says around the sudden lump in his throat. 

‘He gets excited about sticks, don’t you, Loki?’ the bloke says, leaning down to pat the dog, who deigns to accept such affection, while keeping his eyes possessively on the stick, or Louis. The bloke - Louis must get his name, he must - has pink cheeks when he stands up. Louis hopes it’s because he accidentally made a sex joke at seven in the morning, and he likes boys, and he likes Louis, but clearly that’s the caffeine in the tea making him rush ahead like that. The tea. Obviously. 

Harry’s going to piss himself laughing when Louis tells him that he ran into a bloke while he was running and he was too struck dumb by his sheer hotness to take a line like _excited about sticks_ and run with it.

Oh no, Louis thinks, babbling still in his own head, he still hasn’t said _anything._

‘That’s all right! Think I’ve got it. Wouldn’t want to keep a pissed-off god waiting,’ Louis manages to choke out, and hands over the stick. 

And oh, _shit_. Here Comes the Sun starts playing in Louis’s head because he was wrong, so wrong, because Loki’s human looks up and grin all proper-smiley like and his eyes crinkle up, and _shit._

Louis resolves to find a hobby. A real one. With people. Clearly he needs to talk to adults more often, if just the one (incredibly attractive) grown adult man can reduce him to mush in a damp park before it’s even eight o’clock in the morning. Maybe Harry (maybe everyone) had a point when they tried to get him drunk and on okcupid with one of his old pics as his icon. 

‘Suits him,’ Louis says, nodding to the dog. 

‘The first time we got him home, he got in the bed and nicked my hoodie for a blanket and growled if anyone tried to move him to the dog bed we bought,’ Loki’s human replies, then throws the stick halfway to the moon with the arms that are made of biceps like Captain fucking America in a t-shirt. Loki transforms from stubborn weight of judgey glaring on Louis’s left foot to a blur of yipping motion in a heartbeat, while Louis catches up with words like ‘we,’ ‘home’ and ‘the.’

He used to be able to say things like that, too. He knows that you only say ‘the bed’ instead of ‘my bed’ if you’re sharing it. 

‘Imperious little fucker,’ a voice shouts from halfway across the grass - a familiar voice. 

Louis shoves the disappointment - he rolls with these things like a _rockstar_ , always has - down into the pit of his stomach and turns to the figure in black walking towards them like they’re modelling for Tyra and the panel. (Hobby. Must get a hobby, Louis thinks, again.)

‘Oi, Malik! Do you mean me or the dog? This one’s too nice for it,’ Louis shouts back and hits the back of his hand off of the tall drink of cold water of a boy beside him. He does it before he can over-think it. (Over-think? Louis? Never.) 

If cornfed beautiful knows Zayn, Louis might see him again, and he isn’t going to be _weird_ about this non-crush that he’s not starting. Nope. 

‘Ha, that’s what he wants you to think, and of course I mean you, that dog loves me,’ Zayn says, calm and suave as fuck as ever, leather jacket and over-priced headphones and record bag at his hip. Then he grabs Louis in a headlock and messes with his hair, which he should know better, he should, because he looks utterly betrayed when Louis returns the favour.

‘Um.’

‘Liam, this idiot is Louis Tomlinson,’ Zayn says with a grin, ‘and if I’d had to be up at this hour to see him at uni, we’d never have been friends in the first place. Where the everlasting fuck have you been, man? Half the time I see Harry, he’s too wasted to answer direct questions, and you know what his stories are like.’ 

Louis puffs out his chest and tries to claim back his dignity as Loki slams into the back of his knee, pointy stick in his mouth first. He must have been out of it lately: Liam winces at the mention of Harry and stories, too, and somehow they’ve never met before this. Louis would remember that. Also, he doesn’t like when Harry makes friends Louis hasn’t met. He has terrible taste in people, except when he has excellent taste in people. Louis prefers to make sure which side he’s on this time and veto where necessary. 

‘Falling asleep to Hannah Montana repeats and making packed lunches?’ 

‘Ah,’ Zayn answers, drawing the syllable out like a drag on a cig. ‘Sorry, mate. Think I knew that had happened.’

Liam looks between them. Louis doesn’t look away from Zayn. That would mean explaining. 

‘That’s all right. You stink of whatever club you and Harold were ‘‘networking’’ in last night, so I’ll let you off with it on the condition that you get some bloody sleep,’ Louis says, and if his grin and shrug are a tiny bit strained at the edges, he’s the only one who’ll know. He bumps Liam - Liam! - with his shoulder. ‘Got two kids at home. Doesn’t leave much time for running around with this lot, these days. What’s your excuse? Distract artful dodger here for me while I throw this the other way.’ 

Louis picks up the stick and throws it while Liam scratches Loki behind the ears, and Loki goes running off again, glaring at him on the way while his tail wags. It doesn’t go as far as it did when Liam threw it. 

It might be his imagination. It probably is. But Liam’s smile doesn’t crinkle his eyes the same way this time. Louis gets that sudden kick in his stomach - like a warning system - that he’s maybe put his foot in it. (Or maybe Liam thinks he’s not single, and that’s sort of an encouraging sign? He shuts down that line of thought right off.)

Liam raises an eye at Zayn, arms crossed, and nice forearms on display. ‘I don’t have to be up this early, you know.’ 

Zayn has the decency to look vaguely ashamed. Louis suppresses a grin and nods seriously at Zayn over Liam’s shoulder. Zayn nearly loses it. For a second, it’s their eleven o’clock tutorial on a Tuesday all over again. 

‘Tomorrow, I’ll be here, I promise,’ Zayn says earnestly to Liam instead, flipping Louis off with the hand at his side. 

‘I’m a physio at a hospital in the city,’ Liam answers Louis, after a serious nod to Zayn that says he better. ‘Zayn thinks that means I’m also his personal trainer when he gets lazy.’

Not that Zayn’s agency will care, Louis thinks. Zayn’s face is a mysterious gift that’s only gotten sharper and more interesting to a camera with a bit of age and maintenance. Louis knows whatever charm he had once upon a time, when he and Harry and Zayn ran around half the bars in London, might have taken a hit with parenthood. He barely has time to pull a comb through his hair, he’s expecting greys any day soon, and he’s started shaving one day out of three. (If running into hot people in the park is going to be a thing, he’s going to time that day in three more carefully.) 

‘You did Sports Science-’

‘-which is a _different course_ -’

‘Whatever, Liam, you and that demon dog of yours love me,’ Zayn says, rolling his eyes and checking his phone. The page is crowded with twitter and facebook notifications before he slides the lock off. 

Liam sighs, but Louis can see the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

‘Shit, well, okay,’ Zayn says, furiously two-finger typing out an email. ‘This is fun, lads, we should do it again sometime when the sun is actually up and bars are serving, but apparently the photographer with a Nylon shoot with Kirsten Stewart this morning that I spoke to last night needs me at 9.’

‘You haven’t even showered, you filthy bastard,’ Louis replies after a second, and this too reminds him of their grotty flat off the far end of Jubilee line. 

‘Stylists,’ Zayn says vaguely, waving his hand, kissing Liam on the cheek and wandering off to jump the fence back to civilisation. 

‘Well,’ Liam says, and just before it gets ferociously awkward, Loki barks from twenty feet away, sitting on the grass like a cow that senses a storm and declaring the stick game done. 

‘I’m going that way,’ Louis says quickly, pointing. 

‘Oh, good, walk with us?’ 

Christ. Louis almost hopes that Liam doesn’t like him. If all it takes to get that smile out of him is that Louis is _going that way too_ , his heart won’t take it for long. 

‘Bet he actually looks good at the shoot, the wanker,’ Louis says in the silence. Zayn’s skin and eyes haven’t met a hangover in all the years Louis has known him. Their old bathroom and Zayn’s stomach, entirely different matter, but Louis isn’t to blame for his old tolerance for strong spirits in shots form. 

Liam barks out a surprised laugh. ‘Does it help if I explain how the alcohol is still in his system and he’ll feel dead rubbish by teatime? It’s science.’

‘Just in time to nap through the hangover, get back up, and meet Harry at a club to scout for more work,’ Louis replies, ‘but yeah, a bit. I’m in bed by the bloody watershed half the time nowadays.’ 

There’s a beat. ‘You two must not get much in the way of nights off. Two kids,’ Liam says, carefully jutting his chin out and looking innocently ahead to where Loki is narrowing his eyes at a patch of leaves and scrabbling through it with both paws like the truffle hunter Louis saw on a programme about How Stuff Works. (Hobby. He needs a hobby.)

Louis bites the inside of his cheek and fights not to crow or punch the air, because thank god, the boy is fit _and_ unsubtle. His very favourite. Well, it is now. 

‘Just me,’ Louis answers, and it hurts a little less than it did the last time he explained it to someone. Either Liam’s totally awesome, flirty agenda is numbing the pain, or time is doing that thing where it makes it all a bit less apocalyptic. ‘Sooz takes the twins every second weekend or so, but it’s mostly me. She’s all over the place.’

Liam’s eyebrows go into his short hair and Louis smacks his forehead while Loki winds around their legs as if he wants them to trip. Evil little genius dog, Louis thinks, realising that idea has potential. 

‘Twins, eh? Aren’t you Zayn’s mate with the twin sisters? Aren’t twins supposed to skip a generation or something?’ Liam is clearly giving him an out, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, and Louis appreciates it even while he’s not taking it. 

‘Sooz is great, I mean, she’s really great,’ Louis scrambles to backtrack, because he can’t put two words in order this morning. ‘And she always makes sure she has that weekend off for the twins. It’s just that she works all over the place. Does fashion business stuff, lots of flying, goes to all the Weeks, you know.’

Liam’s shoulders relax very slightly, and bloody hell, Louis thinks. Where have Harry and Zayn been hiding this one? Did they keep him locked up in case he cared about people too much and got hurt? Louis thinks he can understand the impulse. 

‘So you’re-’

Liam’s eyebrows are slightly narrowed, and Louis gets it, it’s confusing. Their mums, their friends, nobody had really got it. They’d been waiting on the wedding, not waiting on them to move into separate houses. 

‘Sooz is a mate,’ Louis answers after a hesitation, realising as he says it that it’s actually true. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. ‘We weren’t married, but we had the twins, and then we were going out but living apart, and then we weren’t … going out anymore. We do stuff, the five of us, trips and things, but Sooz and I aren’t together anymore. Her bloke is nice.’ He shrugs. It always makes him feel silly and self-conscious, telling it like a high school drama, using trivial words like _nice._

What he really remembers is the two of them trying so hard to keep it together, because they were good people, and they were good _together_ until they weren’t. Trying to keep it good for the kids but for them, too, and drifting so slowly apart anyway. 

Liam nods. ‘So long as you’re all happy, yeah?’ Louis nods, relieved. Some people judge. He mostly never gives a shit about that, and he’d like to think his mates have better taste in people than that, but you never know. Liam coughs and says, ‘I broke my leg and my arm.’ 

It’s an abrupt change of subject, and Louis is grateful for it, but also what. He doesn’t bother with subtle and pointedly looks at Liam, who is walking and throwing things with aplomb and style. 

‘Ages ago, but it took a while to get back to you know, work,’ Liam answers his look. ‘There was other stuff, too. I’m not really supposed to get hit in the chest with whole cars.’ 

Louis hasn’t met anyone who _is_ , because that would be some comic book shit that he’d be totally up for, but Liam sounds both oddly specific and apologetic. It’s not a good look on him. Not that he seems to have bad looks. They’re getting to the gate of the park and the sun is higher, burning off the early morning clouds. ‘Physio getting broken,’ Louis says instead, letting the grin onto his face and his eyebrows waggle. ‘Bet the jokes were fucking horrible. Almost sorry I missed those.’

‘You have _no idea,’_ Liam laughs and replies in a rush that’s at least partly relief. ‘I work with Niall, you know, Irish, bit weird,’ Louis does, because everyone knows Niall for all he’s out of the DJ game now, ‘he kept texting me the worst ones upstairs from around the hospital. They had competitions.’ 

‘God, you must not have wanted to leave. I’d break something to eat three meals by Niall every day,’ Louis says before he can think. He winces, but Liam just laughs, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing but likes it anyway. 

‘I’m going to that newsagent,’ Louis points. Liam looks at his phone for the time and frowns. ‘Mum takes the kids on Friday morning before school and gets them from the nursery at lunchtime - they get a half day and I work from home for a couple of hours in the afternoon,’ Louis answers, then wonders if that’s what Liam was even thinking. Liam nods, again with that tiny edge of relief, and something warm curls in Louis’s stomach that he even thought of it. ‘Don’t suppose you want to have breakfast and try to work out why we haven’t been in the same room before?’

‘This is a room?’ Liam answers, opening the door and holding it a second extra so Louis can catch it easily. Loki sits obediently outside, humouring them. 

‘It is now,’ Louis says, lifting a bottle of the ridiculous This Is Water lemon and lime he likes, but only gets on a Friday because it’s the end of the week. Some people drink beer at 5pm. 

Liam grins at him. Louis picks up a bar of chocolate while he’s there and slips it into his hoodie pocket along with his headphones, wrapped around his iphone. 

‘You know, I should probably tell you that chocolate with breakfast is a horrible dietary decision if you’re trying to stay fit,’ Liam says as they walk down the street, which is much, much busier than when Louis left the house. Loki registers disapproval of the lead nonsense but sticks close to Liam’s reassuringly fit legs anyway. 

‘Thought you weren’t a personal trainer?’ Louis shoots back to cover the ridiculous thrill he gets from hearing Liam call him fit, then shakes his head. ‘Not for me, anyway. The twins won’t eat chocolate without their name on it, so KitKats it is. Suppose I should be grateful they don’t want to eat more crap. Or that we didn’t call them Cream and Egg.’

Liam laughs, and Louis is surprised by how much he likes being the one to make him. ‘So, breakfast?’ 

They go to a greasy spoon and get full plates of fry ups that would make Niall both proud and jealous, phones on the table at their right hands. Louis has the usual text from his mum to say that the twins got to nursery all right. Liam teases more answers out of Louis about Sooz and the kids than the separation counsellor social services had sent. In return, Louis hears all about the hospital that Niall seems to rule from its kitchen, and about Zayn’s more adventurous exploits that he’s missed. 

Liam stirs sugar into his tea with a fork, which is weird as hell, and Louis isn’t talking about the fork, but Louis thinks he can get over it if Liam keeps accidentally bumping his ankle against his under the table. It’s a small table and he’s got those long legs, so really, it’s no-one’s fault if it happens again. 

*

Liam swears under his breath about three minutes after he gets into his flat when he realises he didn't ask Louis for his phone number. They had their phones on the table _the whole time._ For all the people they know in common, it doesn't sound like they're going to be in the same room by accident any time soon, and Liam isn't sure where on the keen to borderline creepy scale it would fall if he walked Loki through the same park every morning at least once or twice (he's a growing pup; he needs walks) trying to find one reluctant jogger in central London.

Except.

Oh, they're going to rip the absolute _piss,_ Liam thinks for a second, then reaches for his phone.

Harry and Zayn don't reply to his very cool, very casual text instantly, or by the time he's out of a shower. Probably sleeping off the night before or in the middle of a shoot. Who knows with those two. Niall doesn't have a recent number for Louis but uses a lot of winky little faces that Liam thinks he didn't _have_ to put in the message, really.

His phone buzzes and he's got two messages. Harry says, unhelpfully, _you don't work friday yet right?? go here @3 and only losers google ok I mean it_ with an address. Zayn says, equally unhelpfully, _google him fucking hell let me sleep._ His phone buzzes again. It's Harry. _IGNORE ZAYN + THE INTERNET LIAM PAYNE._

Normally, Liam would laugh and laugh at anyone who took Harry's advice over Zayn's, because Harry. Well. He's a sweet lad, but Liam still doesn't know how _he_ was in various bits of plaster and on crutches for months and Harry's not completely broken. But his message has more substance – and clearly more sleep – behind it than Zayn's, so he does his exercises. Then he tries to unpack his boxes to make the bare, new ground floor flat a bit easier on the eyes, phones his mum and has a nap, and then it's half one, so he'd better get his stuff together.

Loki gives him a glare as he goes. Whether it's because Liam's not taking him out or because he somehow knows who Liam is going to see, he doesn't know.

*

Liam is going to kill Harry, or kiss him, or something, the devious little fuck.

This is just _unfair._ Also 'unf', which he saw a lot on the internet while he was stuck in bed for weeks.

It's just.

Well.

Harry could have _warned_ him.

Technically, Harry _had_ said three, but Liam hates being late for things and it was a couple of changes away on the tube, so he left early. The tube is never quiet, exactly, but he'd made it in more than decent time. To his ruination. Because _fuck._ (Liam considers that he might need to get out more.)

Liam feels a teeny bit like a creep, staring through the window of the shop, which is partly fake-frosted over to look like a fairytale grotto, but he can't bring himself to look away. He tries to think of any kids he knows with birthdays coming up so he has a reason to go into a children's bookshop. Not any of Zayn's or Jade's families, not any of Dani's either, shit. He settles on Christmas, which is Jesus's probably-fake birthday, when Jesus was a child, or something. If anyone asks, it is never too early to start Christmas shopping. His mum said that to him once. It's legitimate.

Liam opens the shop door and winces at the bell. It sounds about a million times too loud. The lady behind the till looks up from where she'd been leaning, chin on her hand and smiling softly, sees his mimed apology and waves him on. Liam dives – quietly – behind the nearest bookshelf and tries to make himself as small and invisible as possible. He doesn't want to disturb Louis when he's being a professional.

Which is why he shifts for a slightly better sightline a minute later. Right.

The whole shop is the sort of explosion of bright colours that Liam usually only sees on the kids ward at work, and he's not there very often – his clients mostly come to his set of small offices with his equipment already set up. There's a cheerful jumble of bookcases against all the walls, with makeshift aisles and islands of shelves at various heights and toys scattered around. The whole place is a warm and fuzzy kind of clutter and chaos, with mobiles of stars and pirate ships hanging from the ceiling, and right in the middle, there's Louis.

He's sitting at the back of the shop, cross-legged on a low beanbag the shape of a mushroom. His hair is sticking up sort of intentionally – Liam cut his hair short to avoid that kind of styling but it's nice to look at on Louis – and he's wearing a worn and soft-looking jumper with elbow patches and a wide neck that shows a bit of his very noticeable collarbones.

There's a little boy in a stripy t-shirt sitting next to him, smiling at the floor, which is a patchwork of rugs with ladybirds and turtles – ooh, Liam likes that one – and dragons on them. The boy keeps pushing a beanie that's too big for him up off his eyes and reaching out to touch the brown suede patches on Louis's jumper every time he reaches to turn a page. Louis flashes him a smile and tugs the beanie back down without skipping a beat in his story.

He looks like some kind of fairy king or sprite or – Liam runs out of words except _really fit person_ and flashes back to the bit in _Casper_ with _Can I keep you?_

Because he's reading a story out loud to about twenty children. As if everything else about the scene in front of Liam _weren't enough,_ there's the awake, expressive version of the voice Liam heard that morning and twenty children looking at Louis like he's got them hypnotised. When Louis stops narrating to make a complicated gesture in the air and a noise like a scary swamp creature low in his throat Liam holds on to the bookcase nearest to him for dear life and gets out his phone. The lady at the till gives him a sympathetic nod.

_everything is horrrrrrrrible u r a bad freind_

Harry responds with a _;) you're welcome is he sitting on the mushroom stool?_ and Zayn's name pops up straight after with _just ask him to tuck you in at night already I haven't had enough coffee and you are the most frustrated person I have ever met ever_.

Liam's friends are really, really unhelpful. Also, apparently, inseparable. Liam is so getting them drunk and asking pointed questions about their sex lives.

He looks around, feeling his cheeks flush. Is he allowed to think things like that in a children's bookshop? 

He texts Niall. Maybe he'll make sense. Louis's voice and the warm light coming in through the windows are lulling him into feeling a bit dozy. He'd known walking Loki an extra run around the park that morning was probably a bit much – it's his first week back at work four days out of five – but Liam can't bring himself to regret it.

_its a shop not a fucking church and you should ask him out y/y how many months were you in a bed with your good arm in plaster again?_

Liam blushes. Fucking Niall. There were a lot of good things about Niall working in the hospital while Liam was in it: food, jokes and company. And the extra desserts he slipped Liam at the end of his shift. But Niall knows far too much about Liam's recovery process and he isn't afraid to use it even a little bit.

And it's sort of true.

Liam had been on a few chilled out dates with Dani when he got hit by the Land Rover on his way to work, and that had been the end of that. Dani was great, but the accident had been at exactly the wrong time for them: they'd been close enough she'd kept in touch and visited, but they weren't _going out_ when it happened, so the drift into friends – good ones, he loves her to bits – had been as sort of inevitable as Liam's brain-breaking frustration issues.

Which seem to have been handed to him on a plate by the universe in the form of a giggling, grinning, knee-tapping, story-reading children's author sitting on a mushroom like Little Mister Hot as Hell Tuffet. Liam looks around the corner and jerks back like he's been burned: Louis has them all _chanting along_ with some kind of magic spell in the book, what.

Liam pulls his knees up to him and pulls one of the books out of the shelf opposite. It's one of Louis's – Louis Tomlinson, he sees – because the world is against him ever being happy again if he doesn't get Louis's phone number. But. They have friends in common – and Zayn is doing illustrations for him, Liam hadn't put 'Zayn's author' together with Louis but he's going to throttle Zayn as well as Harry for this – so what if it all goes horribly wrong and Liam's ruined the fragile little friend group he's just managed to find in London?

'Never heard of him, bet he's rubbish.'

A Converse toe kicks the book cover lightly.

The lady by the door shouts warningly: 'Break my shop again, you pay for it, Lou!'

'Cheryl, I can kick it all I like, it's my book!'

Oh.

Liam looks up and the sun catches Louis's hair, his eyes are very blue and his grin is very wide. He offers Liam a hand and all Liam can think is _do you trust me?_ and _second star on the right and straight on till morning._

He takes Louis's hand with his left and feels the tug as he stands up with a wince. The leg still gets stiff if he curls up in child-sized patches of floor. Which he does often, clearly. He professionally notes that Louis must get _some_ exercise in: there's core strength and biceps that can do some work under that jumper, if he can pull Liam to his feet with only a little help. The jumper looks softer close up and there's most of a shelf's difference in their heights. Liam wants to pull him in and gather him up but also kiss his grinning mouth til it's red. It's very confusing.

Before Liam can say anything, the boy in the red stripes barrels into Louis's side and digs small fingers into his stomach.

'Yours?' Liam asks, swallowing and remembering he has words, and can speak to another grown up, yes he can.

Louis shakes his head and ruffles the boy's hair. 'Max likes the stories, don't you?'

Max nods and pokes at Louis's elbow patch again.

Louis grins at Liam, then down at Max. 'Max, this is Liam. He's very nice.'

Max gives Liam a look and looks back at Louis with a quick head shake.

'And his dog has an amazing face, but don't tell Loki I said that, because he'll think I _like_ him,' Louis makes a suitably disgusted face complete with scrunchy nose and Max giggles against his hip, giving Liam a slightly less apprehensive look.

'I'll bring him next time,' Liam says, digging out his phone and pressing the power button to show Max the screensaver, which is Loki giving Liam an indignant look while sitting on a breakfast bar stool in the kitchen. Liam might have gotten a little bit bored while he was on crutches.

Liam doesn't look up from Max, because he's worried that he's just done something horribly wrong by saying 'next time' to a small child – or to Louis.

'That's a brilliant idea!' Louis says brightly, and when Liam looks up, he's nodding.

Max reaches out to tap the screen and grins suddenly, then there's a voice shouting his name and he stamps on Louis's foot before running away with a giggle.

Louis winces and Liam tries to contain a laugh.

'Can't even complain because I taught him that one,' Louis says philosophically, beckoning Liam out of his corner and starting to stack up the little multi-coloured chairs and bean bags. Liam catches sight of a poster – A4, home-printed, with _award-winning children's author_ and _writer-in-residence_ on it – that has Louis's face on it. There's a small fingerprint-sized smudge of paint on his cheek. He's making a ridiculous face at the camera with two children climbing on him who can only be his. Liam gulps and turns, sees Louis watching him.

'You going to watch or help, Liam?'

Louis drags his name out a bit petulantly. Liam bites back a comment about how he might just watch; there are still _children_ around. He's sure his filter usually works better than this.

'Help, sorry,' he replies, taking the chairs from Cheryl and stacking them into the small cupboard Louis has pulled open. Liam considers the irony because: _help._

There's just the three of them in the shop, now, Louis waving and making a face over Liam's shoulder to the last of the small crowd and their accompanying adults outside the shop.

When the clearing up is done, Cheryl gives Liam a few significant nods and firmly shoos them out of the shop, claiming to have work to do and that Louis is a terrible nuisance of a distraction. Liam can appreciate that sentiment, he really can.

The bell rings as the door shuts behind them and Louis does his best to burrow into the furry corners of a worn denim jacket with sleeves that come down to his knuckles. Liam had things he was going to say that were witty and interesting, but he caught sight of a strip of skin at Louis's hip when he shrugged on his jacket and now he can't remember them.

'So I hope you weren't too bored,' Louis says, as if he'd invited Liam or something, just as Liam tries to apologise for showing up out of nowhere.

'I asked Harry for your phone number but he wouldn't give me it,' Liam finishes in a rush, 'just sent me this address and told me to be here at three.'

'That little-' Louis bites his tongue. Literally. Liam can see it poking out between his sharp little teeth. Nothing will ever be okay again. Louis's eyes snap back to Liam's and they're bright and full of mischief. 'So you fancy me then?'

Liam is blushing, he can feel it. He decides that subtlety must be for people who haven't spent months recovering from major injuries and people who don't have small children. He can get on board with that. He makes a proper effort to look Louis straight in the eyes and says, 'So I do,' with a nod.

Louis grins and rocks back on his heels, then forward, digging his phone out from his jacket pocket. 'Yes, good, we can work with that. Phone number please.'

'You're mates with Hazza on facebook, right?'

'Facebook, Liam Payne? You disappointment me.' He snaps his fingers. 'Don't ruin this. When the kids of today are grown up, they'll probably be swapping retina scans.'

Liam laughs and raises his eyebrows. 'Sounds romantic. Look into my eyes.'

God help him, Louis does, waggling his eyebrows right back, and then folds in half with laughter, and Liam can't help giggling right back. 'Yeah,' Louis says, 'look into my cybernetic eyes.'

Liam gets his own phone out and hands it to Louis with the number keypad screen up. Louis taps his number in and Liam looks up as the call starts to ring. He tries to make his face serious. 'I'm going to hang up on you.'

'Good,' Louis replies, just as serious. 'I wasn't going to answer you.'

They dissolve into giggles again about a second after they meet each other's eyes and Cheryl gives them a look from inside the shop.

'Oh, shit,' Louis says suddenly, eyes widening. 'I need to head off to pick up the twins from my mum's.'

Liam nods and quickly saves the contact. 'I should be getting back to take Loki a walk.'

'They're um, Cheryl's okay with dogs, if you meant what you. Yeah,' Louis's sentence collapses on him and Liam bites his lip so he doesn't smile. Louis is bouncing on his heels again, probably because he should be leaving.

'I'll bring him next time,' Liam says with a smile, tries to be as sincere as he was to a four-year old, because he doesn't want to break this promise, either.

*

'Did I mention he _held open the bookshop door_ for me? Who even does that?'

'Only eleven times and nice people, Lou. I do that for you and you never notice,' Harry's voice says, bored. 'Just – do something about it already. I can accidentally link some of your old shoots on facebook if you want. The one with the swimming trunks had _great_ thighs.' There's a pause. 'Seriously. I don't think I can handle it if you just pine for months on end about someone ever again. You're kind of insufferable when you don't get what you want.'

Louis wants to defend himself and say he wasn't _that bad_ before he and Sooz kissed after a runway show she was managing in Rome but, well, he was. And Harry, who was his connection to Sooz, being the kind of height for fashion modelling that Louis has never been, managed to hear most of it. So maybe he has a tiny bit of a point. Still.

'Gotta go, the twins are coming downstairs, stop answering the phone without your clothes on-!'

He hangs up and misses Harry's reply. 

*

5.

When Louis’s mobile goes off, he swears under his breath fiercely, drags himself to his feet and pads to the kitchen, where the supposed silent mode is vibrating against the metal of the drying rack at a decibel level unknown to man. He’s aware that he should be wearing socks, because his feet getting cold isn’t going to help this situation even a little, but he _hates_ socks. He can’t sleep with socks on. He’s never been able to. It’s just weird and wrong and if his phone is his mum dropping him a missed call to remind him to answer her texts, he’s going to -

Well, he’s going back to the couch, his wonderful children and their blanket pile, and glaring at his empty tea mug, that’s what he’s going to do. His mum isn’t above such tricks, even while she’s away on holiday, but neither is Louis above ignoring them. They’ve both matured as people through having children, clearly. 

It isn’t, though.

‘Hey, vas happening!’ 

Louis holds the phone away from his ear and scowls at it, tugging his jumper down. He’s been wearing this one for three days straight. Wherever Zayn is sounds _loud._ Which, well, everywhere that isn’t Louis’s own house sounds loud right now. This shouldn’t shock him, exactly, but there’s the question of why Zayn thinks Louis needs to be involved. He probably has a Harry there, after all. 

‘Where are you, man? Thought tonight was gonna be, you know, a thing! Lads’ night out! All the lads!’

Oh, he definitely has a Harry there. Harry is giggling into the phone and everything. 

Louis leans his head against the fridge. It’s not as cold as he would like so he opens the door and leans his head against the first bottle at head height. It’s one of three precariously stacked cartons of milk. That’s okay. (Sooz sent an Ocado delivery and two bunches of flowers and rushed his Lovefilm queue. Sooz is great. She’s also in Tokyo.) 

He leans back because Zayn is still talking and he still doesn’t know why.

He hears a voice, then another voice. 

‘Lou, love, it’s Haz,’ there’s an edge in Harry’s voice, ‘you okay? You let Zayn talk about brain shots. You hate brain shots.’ 

Louis nods. He does hate brain shots. They were gross in 2006 and they still taste like piss and look like brains. What’s to like?

The action loosens the milk from its secure pyramid and the cartoon bounces. The way the milk sloshes around inside it in a sort of slow motion makes Louis feel a bit dizzy. The carton’s made of that plastic that bends in a sort of squishy way, so Louis is never sure if he can recycle it. Lately Loki’s been chewing it up before it gets to the recycling though and Louis has started taking the bottles to the park with him for the wretched thing to play with. Sooz sent enough stuff that stacking the fridge had been a game of Tetris. 

‘Lou, I can hear you pottering about over there, answer me.’ 

Harry’s voice is sharper than expected. 

‘Harold,’ Louis says, bending down to scoop up the milk now time has sped up again. He fails to pick it up because the room spins en route. ‘I think I’m supposed to be where you are, but I forgot to do the thing, and now I’m not.’

‘Jesus Christ, stop talking, you sound like shit,’ Harry replies succinctly. ‘Was that my mate or a creature from the deep?’ There’s a pause. ‘Do you need anything?’

‘Liam,’ Louis says, closing the fridge door and staggering back to the living room door frame. He holds on to it and watches while Kit, usually the quiet one of the twins, mutters in his sleep and reaches for Kat’s blanket, which Kat turns in her sleep to share. They’ve both burrowed into the warm hollow he’s left between them on the couch. ‘Don’t tell him I forgot that I could phone him but I think I could have phoned him before now?’

Harry laughs on the other end of the phone and tells him to stop talking again. The noise goes to slightly less than deafening, as if he’s stepped outside of wherever they are. The bass still thumps from the club through the phone to Louis’s brain, where the bass bounces around and joins the chorus dancing in his head already. On tap shoes and over-extended metaphors. He’s halfway through mentally composing a blog post called ‘When Writers Get Sick’ when he hears: ‘Li, I think Lou forgot he was your boyfriend again! But he sounds like Darth Vader!’ 

*

Liam hears Louis’s voice and blinks. He doesn’t think it’s the club noise that’s making Louis sound crap. He gives Lou very specific instructions, has him repeat them back, and waves off the boys, all of whom offer to come with, but Liam fends them off with variations from ‘he’s my boyfriend, let me be the knight in shining armour’ (Zayn), ‘bring us food tomorrow’ (Niall) through to ‘we’re going to need a reinforcements at some point, Uncle Harry.’

Then he stops by his flat by taking a cab he probably shouldn’t, grabs a bag and shoves some t-shirts in it (and other things, he’s very organised, but he’s paying less attention than he could be), picks Loki up under one arm and gets in the car. Loki looks displeased at having been woken up but he settles against Liam’s chest in the cab and stays thankfully quiet for the rest of the ride.

All in all, Liam is standing on Louis’s perfectly, wonderfully ordinary doorstep less than an hour after Zayn called him. He considers ringing the bell, but... 

If Lou’s feeling ill and the twins are sleeping Liam doesn’t want to wake them. And well, Louis did show him where the spare key was. Not to mention Harry tossed Liam his set of Lou’s keys before he left the club. 

He looks down at Loki, who stares up at him as if asking _well, what are you waiting for? It’s cold._ and nods. 

The door creaks a little when it opens and Liam tries not to wince. Loki pads in and appears to know where he’s going. Liam’s not saying he’s following his dog into his boyfriend’s house, but he is curious to know where the pup is heading so purposefully.

In the living room Liam watches as Loki hops up--

Oh.

_Oh_.

Liam doesn’t even fight the grin that he can feel growing on his face. 

Louis’s cuddled up on the couch, the twins on either side of him, and all of them are fast asleep. Liam can hear their out of sync heavy, congested breaths; Kat coughs a little as she shuffles into Loki, who has now squeezed between her and Louis and god, Liam wasn’t ready for this. 

Not this feeling, which is so huge and suddenly threatening to crush his chest. 

He’d been ready to like Louis and adore his kids. He’d been ready to have dates cut short because of bedtime and for their friends to take the mick out of the fact they basically look like a little family when they go to the park with Loki. He’d been ready for all sort of things that he had understood came with dating Louis, because dating Louis wasn’t just dating the sharp, beautiful writer that Loki ran over in the park, but dating a _dad_ and one who absolutely loves his kids. 

Liam had understood all that. 

But this. 

This feeling of wanting this. Wanting to come into a house with clearly ill people and preferring it to being anywhere else?

Liam had not been ready for this. 

Except here he is. And crap, Louis is coughing himself awake. 

Loki yips and paws at Louis’s thigh. 

‘Reindeer Games? Who let you in?’

Liam coughs to cover up the snort of laughter that that causes which now has Louis squinting at him. He rubs a hand over his face and he looks so tired, the circles under his eyes prominent and bruised. His hair is matted against his head a bit greasy looking, like he hasn’t had a proper shower in a day or so and his voice sounds so raw, even worse without the excuse of a phone line between them. He blinks a few times and frowns.

‘Li?’

‘Hey, babe,’ Liam says. He sits gingerly on the coffee table in front of Lou and runs his fingers through the matted fringe. Louis leans into Liam’s hand, eyes fluttering closed, and he’s so warm. Overly so. Now it’s Liam’s turn to frown. He looks down and passes his hand over Kit’s forehead which is closer and finds he’s as warm as his dad. 

There’s a flash of annoyance at how ill all three of them are - because he can see how flushed Kat’s cheeks are from where she’s pressed her tiny face into Loki’s fur - and how Louis _didn’t_ call, but he tampers that down quickly enough and worry is just on the heels of that. 

‘You came.’ Louis mumbles eyes opening again and he smiles softly, sleepily.

‘’Course I did.’ Liam leans forward and presses a kiss to Louis’s warm forehead and gently pushes him back against the couch. ‘Harry said you wanted me here.’

Louis yawns and Liam tries to fight the warm in his chest at how as Louis’s hand automatically reach out and check over the twins, fingers brushing cheeks and forehead. He frowns and Liam thinks he knows exactly how he feels at the sight of the two little flushed faces, breathing heavily in and out. 

‘When’s their next medicine dose?’

Louis cuddles Kat closer, shifting her from she’s started using Loki as a pillow and brushes his lips over her temple. He looks at the clock on the wall behind Liam’s head. ‘Couple hours. I think I put a timer on my phone as well.’

Liam nods. ‘Where’s your phone?’

‘Kitchen, I think.’ Louis says, ‘There was tea but then...’ Louis trails off and Liam smiles, leaning forward and kisses his forehead. 

‘I’ll get it, don’t worry.’

Louis smiles. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you.’

‘You forgot tea, babe, I’m surprised you even answered Zayn’s call.’

‘His ringtone is very annoying.’

Liam laughs, standing. ‘I know.’

‘It was annoying me.’

‘I’ve told you to change it.’

Louis mumbles something, Liam is not entirely sure what, but he’s got a fair guess it’s about how he’ll change Zayn’s ringtone when he admits he knows the macarena. Sometimes Liam really doesn’t understand his boyfriend. Or his friends, but that’s an issue for another night. 

Louis’s phone _is_ in the kitchen, by the kettle. Of course. Liam slips it in his pocket. There’s a carton of milk on the table. Liam shakes his head and takes a minute to start the kettle and set the milk back in the fridge again before heading back out to the living room. 

Nobody on the couch has moved. Louis, however, is now half awake and cuddling the kids to him. Liam wants to pick all three (four including Loki, who does not seem to be moving from Kat’s side) up and keep them safe and warm, which is a ridiculous notion considering they’re _already_ safe and warm. 

Still. 

Moving back to Louis’s side he reaches down to where Kat and Loki are curled up together. Louis’s eyes narrow, tired more than anything, and his hand closes over Liam’s wrist. 

‘Come on, let’s get them get up to bed.’

‘They don’t like being alone when they’re ill,’ Louis says, eyes flitting down to where Liam’s lifting Kat and Loki up. Kat curls a small fist into Liam’s shirt and he tightens his arms around her and Loki. 

And, well, Louis might be the one that’s ill, but Liam could just die. He’s pretty sure this is not the moment for an emotional revelation, so he’s pushing it back, but yeah. Liam swallows. Not the time to be imagining picket fences, Payne.

‘Your bed’s big enough, yeah?’ 

‘Um, yeah,’ Louis says, well, more coughs and his eyes don’t look away from Liam. Kit coughs at his side, taking an edge of Lou’s attention and Liam takes the chance to straighten and start heading up with Kat and Loki. Loki licks at Liam’s chin like he’s supporting Liam’s plans. Or that’s what he hopes.

Liam nods. ‘I’ll settle them up there then, okay? I’ve put the kettle on for some tea and yeah... We’ll go up.’ Oh god, he’s going up into Louis’s bedroom, which all right, to be fair, isn’t a new thing, but he just pretty much told Louis he’s staying the night, which _is_ a new thing. He’s -- _they’re_ camping out in his bed with him and his sick kids and God, Liam so isn’t ready for this, except apparently it’s exactly what he wants. Which is a bit scary, considering how a few months ago, he had a tiny flat and a tiny evil dog he didn’t ask for, and no idea what he wanted.

When he comes back downstairs he nudges Louis into the kitchen and takes Kit up. Like his sister, Kit curls a fist, except he hits Liam square in his jaw. 

God, Liam loves these kids. 

He shifts Kit, rubbing his back when a little coughing fit hits the boy and settles him down next to his sister on Lou’s bed. Loki stands when Liam comes in and then slips in the small space left by the twins, his head by their bent knees looking a little like a direwolf. Liam rubs one of Loki’s ears. 

‘Good boy.’

Back downstairs he finds Louis leaning against the kitchen counter, tea in hand. He pushes himself up with arms that only shake a tiny bit when Liam comes in, and that’s not at all worrying. Liam crosses the kitchen in a few strides and turns Louis against him. ‘When exactly did you last sleep? Properly?’

‘Did you know -’ Louis starts against Liam’s chest, ‘I got cartons and cartoons mixed up earlier. And now all I want is coffee.’

‘Because of the dancing cartoons in the Blur video,’ Liam nods seriously, his chin rubbing against the top of Louis’s head. It’s nice. Louis is nice, really. Also it appears Liam can speak tired Louis, which is a plus, because Liam feels like Louis spends a lot of his time tired. 

He tries really hard not to think about how less tired Louis could be if Liam and Loki were around more. 

Then Louis pitches against him and he’s distracted enough trying to get them both up the stairs that he doesn’t think about it for a good two hours, until he’s hanging up the washing he’s put through and scrubbing four-day-old macaroni and dried on cheese from the bright, stripey plates. 

He’s standing in jogging trousers that he left at Louis’s ‘just in case’, folded neatly in half of a suspiciously empty drawer. Liam’s got no socks, a too short t-shirt and he’s trying to sweep up a kitchen floor, trusting Loki to let him know if he’s needed upstairs. Somewhere between reaching for the pink polka dot dust pan and brush, and thumbing off the main light without looking on the way out of the kitchen, he realises he’s utterly fucked. 

*

Louis wakes up when a rough tongue licks his nose. It is more gross than anything the previous four days have brought, and that’s saying something, because he’s pretty sure the Tomlinson enclave have been single-handedly holding up big pharma and lovefilm at this point. He opens his eyes with a quiet groan, but _everything_ hurts, so he doesn’t actually move yet. 

There’s a large, dark pupil very close to his own. Then an unrepentant lick at his nose. 

Louis tries for _could you not_ with respect to both Loki’s notions of hygiene and the fact that the wretch is not as light as he thinks he is, and he’s sitting right on Louis’s chest, which already felt like it was trapped in a vice. Then Loki turns his head and yips quietly, without moving, and Liam turns over obediently in his sleep before slowly opening his eyes, which are a lighter shade of brown, but not by much. 

Louis feels his throat constrict for an entirely different reason, because the first thing he thinks is _of course, you’re right there._

Then Loki leaps off his chest like his ribs are a wibbly bouncy diving springboard or something (they are not and Louis will tell the demon dog this when he can speak again), runs down the stairs, and Louis feels his eyes widen, and he _sees_ Liam’s eyes widen, because-

‘Louis? Are you all upstairs? It’s eleven already!’

Normally, Louis would be shouting something witty about learning his lack of appreciation for early mornings from the best, but he’s still caught on _his mum_ \- back early from her holiday, or has he been asleep for that many days? 

Liam is scrambling to his feet around the twins, even though Kit seems determined to go where he goes, even in his sleep. Louis is trying to do the same but the just the notion of getting up is tiring him out and anyway it’s too late because just as he manages to sit up - and when he did change into this clean, fresh laundry-smelling jumper... Oh _Liam_. This was the last thing he needed right now.

And thing is he knows if this were a situation happening to someone else, say Harry or any fictional character _ever_ he’d be laughing his arse off. As it is. His mother walks into the room just as Liam is trying to detach Kit’s hand from where they seem to be stuck around his shirt and neck. Kat’s blinking awake with a mumbled, ‘Daddy, Li? Is ‘at gran?’ And Louis is trying to school his face into something his mother won’t be able to read.

‘Lou! When did you get a dog-- Oh!’ His mother catches sight of Liam right away, because it’s impossible to miss. You know, with him standing at the side of Louis’s bed. The bed Louis is currently still in with his two yawning kids.

Louis is too old to crawl under the covers and die of embarrassment because his mum caught him in bed with a bloke-- _his boyfriend_ , but well, he’s seriously considering it now. Of course that’s when Loki jumps back on the bed, padding to the half awake twins when Liam picks him up with a hissed _Loki, no_ , which causes the twins to reach out for Loki and Liam at the same time and god, he now knows where he didn’t inherit his poker face from.

His mother is the worst and the smile on her face promises pain.

Also, more embarrassment. 

Well, if you can’t beat them.

‘Hey, mum.’

‘Hey, darling. Did I come at a bad time?’

He drags a hand through his hair and looks over his shoulder to where Liam is dealing with a handful of puppy and the twins trying to climb up his torso. He seems to feel Louis’s gaze on him though, because he looks up and for a beat their eyes meet and it feels they both have the same thought. 

_Too late now_.

Liam shrugs and smiles.

Louis smiles back and stands, rolling his neck and reaching for Kit, who’s the closest and propping him on his hip. He turns to mum. 

‘No, we’re okay. Have you met Liam?’

It’s not ridiculously endearing how Liam trips over the discarded duvet and has to juggle Loki and Kat just to shake Jay’s hand with a stuttering, blushing ‘hi, nice to finally meet you’. It isn’t. Really. 

Louis still bites his cheek through the whole thing. 

He is so fucked.


	4. loose ends [super rich kid au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end all that matters is that the five of them stay together. Sometimes that’s easier than done. [ All rich, all trying to find something that they already have (with each other) bc they’re losers so of course it takes them forever to figure it out.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls listen for the vibe of what the fic was meant to be like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggiyRLrH4AA  
> this one was posted as meme a long time ago it's not that new.

The hangover isn’t the worst is Liam’s first thought when he wakes up. Pushing off the bed he realises he’s not alone in it and looks over his shoulder, cringing at who might be--

Oh it’s just Danielle and Eleanor.

They’re curled around each other, legs tangled and god it’s a gorgeous picture. Their dresses are rucked up by their thighs, but he can tell they didn’t have sex. And if they did it wasn’t with each other or Liam. Their arms are wrapped around each other, breath coming out soft and steady. El rolls closer to where Liam left an empty space. He can’t help smile and lifts the covers around her and Dani back up. He barely remembers dropping into his - no, wait, this is Lou’s bed, Lou’s house actually, and it’s entirely possible they crawled in after him, or even before. He’d been very out of it. 

He heads to the bathroom, takes a piss, and then stares hard at the mirror as he’s washing up. His eyes are rimmed red and his head is pounding. His tongue feels fuzzy. Drinking and weed is never a good mix with him. If only he remembered that when it counted. But he doesn’t know how to say no to Louis normally and even less with a mouth full of smoke, because they’ve all been shotgunning. 

Moving out of Lou’s room - and where the fuck is he if he wasn’t in bed with them? Louis hates sleeping in rooms not his own if he can help it - Liam turns at a voice softly calling out to him. 

‘Li, that you?’

He’d forgotten what a light sleeper Dani can be. He turns at the door and smiles as best he can. They’re still friendly, but it’s different now. ‘Yeah, sorry I woke you.’

She blinks at him and shakes her head. ‘No, no, ‘is fine,’ she mumbles and looks down at El, ‘probably should get El home anyway.’

Liam nods and it’s not like he wants to take them home, but, ‘You need a ride?’

Dani sits up and Liam lets his eyes drift over how she adjusts her dress back over her boobs. He would be feel bad about staring but he’s too hungover and well, it’s not like he never seen Dani’s tits before. For several months last year - and a few incredibly drunken hook ups since - he’s been intimately familiar with them. 

‘Nah, I’ve got my car.’ She gets up and pokes at El, who only snuggles deeper into the bed. She looks up at Liam. ‘Might need some help with El though.’

Liam huffs a laugh and nods, already moving to pick up El. His body and head protest but it’s not the first time he’s had to do this. All his friends have tendency of needing him to carry them around in various states of inebriation. El thankfully is small and cuddles to Liam right way. He and Dani are silent as they make their way out to where only two cars remain from the party. Zayn and Harry’s, which means that unless there are some people that will need taxis Liam’s not kicking anyone else out. Louis loves throwing parties, but he doesn’t particulary like people staying over. Unless he knows and _likes_ you, you’re not allowed to stay unless you want to be pushed out of the door in the morning without even so much as a cuppa. 

At Dani’s car he settles and buckles El in who somewhere between the front door and the car has started waking up and messily kisses Liam’s cheek.

‘Thanks, Li-love,’ she giggles, using the nickname Dani used to call him by, the one Louis and Zayn hate. Liam ruffles her hair, ‘Later, Els.’

He and Dani say bye too and she kisses his cheek too, but it’s perfunctory and Liam is glad she drove. It’s not that he and Dani aren’t mates anymore after their relationship burned up spectacularly, but some things are still hard. He heads back inside and makes sure that there’s nobody else that needs to be heading home before closing the gate. As it clicks shut and he closes the front door he feels somebody walk up behind him.

It’s Niall.

He’s in his pants and he’s got lipstick and bite marks on his chest, jaw and hips. Liam lifts a brow. ‘Morning. Have a good night?’

‘Fucking fantastic party last night. Smashed it, didn’t we?’ Niall rubs his eyes and grins at Liam and it’s so blinding and bright that Liam’s head starts pounding all over again. 

‘Hungover?’ Niall laughs heading towards the kitchen and Liam flips him off. ‘I don’t know how you’re not.’

‘Irish.’

‘Wanker.’

Niall reaches into the fridge and grabs a beer and some carton of leftover Chinese. When Lou’s parents are out of town he mostly survives on takeway since he gives his cook the time off. Lou’s parents are out of town a lot and with all the girls at boarding school now, well, from where he’s standing Liam can see the fridge is full of containers. He’s not surprised. Watching Niall though as he bites into a cold egg roll, he cringes and kinda chokes a little. ‘Disgusting.’

‘Jealous,’ Niall smirks, digging into his breakfast of cold Chinese.

Liam shrugs. ‘Seen the others?’

‘Harry’s on the sofa, Zayn was in bed with me upstairs.’ And yeah that makes sense because Niall clearly woke up with the munchies. Or not. You can never tell with Niall. 

‘Lou?’

Niall sighs and nods towards outside.

Liam groans and he should have known. That explains how he woke up in Louis’s room without a Louis kicking him in the shins at any rate. Grabbing some Lucozade and chugging some down, he leaves Niall in the kitchen he passes a naked Harry. He snorts at Harry’s semi and throws discarded coat over him. The vials on the glass table are empty and he would worry about how much Harry did last night except he’s breathing deeply, mumbling a little, and Niall didn’t seem worried. Anyway, he has Louis to find.

The door to the pool house is closed but not locked. It’s dark, but Liam knows it like the back of his hand by now. Louis is curled up still asleep on the small sofa there and Liam eyes the empty glasses and leftover weed. That Louis didn’t smoke up with Zayn and Niall is... well. Liam tries not to worry. He drops down by Louis who blinks awake and frowns up at him. A long time ago this would have made Liam recoil, push away and hide, but now he knows better. Louis is a possessive little shit and only shares when he wants to share. And when he doesn’t get his way he’s gets pissy and snappy.

Liam’s head hurts too much deal with a pissy Louis. He shoves at Louis, who bites at Liam’s fingers, and settles on the sofa, pulling the blanket Louis is curled around over him too. 

Louis scoffs, ‘Comfortable?’

Liam wiggles down and closes his eyes, ‘Yeah, cheers. You?’

A pair of sharp elbows poke into his side. ‘No. I had to fucking sleep out here because some people thought it would be fine and dandy to sleep in my room.’

Liam sighs. ‘It’s your bed, Lou, you could have kicked us out.’ He shifts a little and lets Louis curl around him, elbows still poking at him, but he knows that walking away now would be a mistake. Louis grumbles, ‘Nobody but me should be having threesomes in my bed.’ He says something else that gets lost where his mouth is biting at Liam’s bare shoulder and Liam’s swallows at what he thinks he hears, but shakes it off. Lou always plays.

He pulls his arm around Lou and rolls his eyes behind his closed lids. ‘No threesomes were had, Lou. They just passed out in there because they know nobody would have bugged them in your room. Everyone knows the rules.’ He opens his eyes and stares at the top of Louis’s head where it’s tucked into the crook of his neck.

‘Well then I’ll have to tell them it’s a new rule: No passing out in Louis’s room.’

Liam really doesn’t want to feel that prick of hurt so he pushes it down and away. ‘I’ll be sure to remember next time.’ And yeah he knows better than to walk away from Louis when he’s like this and he wants you to prove you like him best, but fuck, he makes it so hard. He goes to get up because this isn’t running away. This is being tired of a cranky Louis talking crap and--

Hands press down on his shoulders and Louis growls, throwing a leg over Liam’s thigh.

‘I didn’t fucking mean you, Li.’

Oh.

Liam’s too hungover for this shit.

Still, he drags his fingers through Louis’s fringe. He turns his face and meets Louis’s sharp the soft look.

‘Just the girls then? That’s not nice.’

‘Fuck nice, I don’t like sharing.’ Louis teeth close over Liam’s collarbone and Liam eyes flutter closed. And yeah, Liam knew that. 

‘Okay.’ He lets his hand drift up into Louis’s hair.

And finally Louis relaxes around him, his breath evens out. Liam knows he should get them up, get out of the pool house and head back to the main house to watch as Harry wakes up starkers and starving, or go wait for Zayn to wake up, eyes bloodshot, and then they’d all push off leaving Lou’s and head to Liam’s or Harry’s as they always do, but he’s comfortable and he woke up with a headache that only now seems to lessening and well, one of the boys will come get them up when they get hungry enough. He’s not fussed and Lou’s soft at his side.

Liam is smart enough to stretch the moment a little longer.


	5. it's a bit like fighting skynet [an rst tour au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings, now with more RST.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be the next bit to Punk'd By Feelings but that didn't happen and half of the fic was used in another fic. :D

_‘You’re incredibly demanding in the mornings, d’you know that?’ Liam says, walking back into the room, tray in hand. Louis grins at the picture he presents and makes grabby hands. Liam’s not sure if Louis means Liam himself or tea._

_People have always told Liam he’s something of an optimist._

_[The tea gets cold.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/671511) _

*

‘We are never going to have warm tea again.’ It becomes a theme in their lives.

*

'Oh, yeah, how was that date, Harry? Been meaning to ask.' 

'What date? Oh, napkin, be back.' 

Louis hits Ed on the arm. 'Date?' He might or might not be taking his lack of knowledge of this event as a personal insult. 

'Haz asked me about a pub, about a month ago. Asked for somewhere he could take somebody, and they wouldn't get any hassle or photos even if they snogged in the corner or anything like that. I said -'

‘Hope I’m not interrupting,’ Harry says, slotting himself back into his seat, and not batting an eyelid that it means getting in the middle of the hug Liam’s just flung Ed’s way. In the middle of a hug is pretty much Harry’s natural habitat. 

Louis stands up and shakes his head with a grin, hand on Ed’s shoulder. ‘We owe you a pint, mate.’

Liam isn’t looking at him, which makes Louis _even prouder_ of the way he says it, all even tone and dry references. ‘Maybe even three.’ 

*

*

Harry shakes his head, grinning dangerously, looking between Liam and Louis and the lads. ‘I cannot believe it! I genuinely cannot believe it! Zayn, Nialler, can you believe it?’

Zayn shakes his head no, very seriously, but Liam can see how his shoulders are shaking in barely suppressed laughter. Niall shrugs, ‘But are we really surprised?’ 

‘Haz, love, care to share with the room?’

Harry sighs, dropping onto the couch with a face that crosses just between extremely put upon and deeply philosophical. Only Harry. ‘It’s just... Your sexual tension is even _worse_ now than before. You’re doing it all wrong!’

Liam bites his cheek, ‘Are we now?’ He runs his thumb and forefinger just over Louis’s braces where they attach to his jeans. Louis squirms a bit, pressing himself closer, and throws one leg over Liam’s thigh.

‘See! That’s exactly what I mean!’ Harry springs up in his seat pointing that them. ‘You got Louis all squirmy and don’t think I don’t see that smug smile, Liam James Payne! You’re supposed boring and soppy now that all the UST - that’s unresolved _sexual tension_ for all of you - is gone, it’s not supposed to be worse! Wrong, I say!’

Louis and Liam share and look and start giggling. Niall’s eyebrows and mouth works like it does whenever he’s baffled by Harry. 

Zayn however: ‘I knew what UST meant!’

‘Not the point, _Zayn_.’

Zayn seems to think this was very much the point because he still mumbles, ‘But I _did_.’

*

 

*

A week ago when Simon announced it they had been excited. But rehearsals have been kicking their arses all week and when Louis flopped onto Liam’s bed earlier he announcing he was ready to die and that Liam could go on without him. As if Liam would. But to be honest the sentiment had been shared. Liam was bloody worn out too. But they both knew they could not ditch. Not this time.

He hadn’t even minded being late to the party and while Harry and the lads had eyed Louis for making Liam late, the truth was it’d been the other way around. Sometimes their cuddling gets out of hand and Liam quite likes seeing Louis spread out, gasping, on his bed. 

That’d been almost three hours ago and whatever giddy high they had gained from that briefl moment was fading. It was a nice party, too, and Liam did always liked how brightly Harry shone in a crowd, his energy spilling out and making them all feel better, or how Niall would slowly gain his confidence a few pints in and spread his excitement about - always coming back to one of the boys when it got too much - and how Zayn would slip like water through the people offering sly jokes and charming smiles. Liam liked sticking to the edges of the party, to no one’s surprise, but it wasn’t because he didn’t know how deal with them or the attention they got. After almost three years he knew how to handle himself at events. Keeping to the side was just easier and let him watch over the lads, his lads - insert all the Daddy Directions jokes here, please - but honestly, it was really only on stage he ever felt comfortable being in the spotlight.

Normally Louis would be in the centre of it all, Harry by his side, one hand pulling Niall close. Zayn would eventually join, sliding in on Niall’s other side, and he’d catch Liam’s eye, nodding him over. That’s always his favourite moment: when they come together from wherever they’d been before and it all just clicks. Everyone sees it, feels it. More than once Liam’s noticed how people eye them when they all slip into their own One Direction bubble. None of them really get it though. Because no one understands that click is stronger than them. How hard they worked in the early days when on paper they made a pretty picture and a better sounding audio clip but not much more. Not a first. They worked hard to trust each other - trust _in_ each other - and thank God for those days at the bungalow where they exchanged pieces of themselves with each other to fit the way they do now. 

Tonight, however, Louis isn’t in the centre of the room. He’s practically clinging to Liam, his eyes heavy, but his body is practically vibrating, hyped up on vodka-Red Bulls. They all went home so tired so they could go change for the party and Liam curses himself for not really making sure he or Louis ate or at the very least drank some juice before leaving. Maybe had an energy bar. They had mostly pretty much fallen into bed and then the shower, everything - from naps to handjobs - half rushed, before walking into the party and straight to the open bar. Louis is running on reserves and Liam knows well enough by now that at least half of that energy is sexual. He can also feel it in the press of Louis’s hands at his side and neck and how hot his mouth is at Liam’s ear. 

Sometimes the fans are right, Liam thinks. Because _this_ is not whispering at all. He shifts his weight as subtly as he can.

Thank God nobody is really paying attention to them right now and even if they did they’d think it was just two members of One Direction being two members of One Direction. (The smartest thing they’ve ever done as a group was to never hide how much they don’t believe in personal space. Anymore anyway, at least, in Liam’s case.)

He turns to Louis, one hand resting against Louis’s stomach, and licks his lips. Louis is so close. A year ago it would have meant nothing too special, just Louis smiling into Liam’s face make his cheeks heat up, a few months ago it would have meant Liam’s stomach getting all knotted up with feelings he hadn’t quite understood. Now it means Louis is close enough to kiss and Liam wants to kiss him very much. The party around them is so full and loud and they’re on the edges so nobody would notice or probably care. Liam doesn’t like to think about the two sides of the entertainment industry lately so he’s cutting off that thought. Because what Liam wants to do after he kisses Louis would be um, _inadvisable_ in public. 

(Most of all he just wants to lay Louis out in his bed again.) 

It takes all his self control to turn their bodies just enough that Liam is blocking out the party and brushes his lips against Louis’s soft and quick, before pulling back as if nothing is wrong. Just some whispering gone wrong, someone might say. If his fingers slide under Louis’s jacket and curl against the small of his back and Louis lets out a small shivery breath then that’s just happenstance. 

‘Replay.’

‘You’re incorrigible.’ But Liam does it again, faster this time. Bringing actions into the game was both his greatest and worst idea. Louis cheats all the time.

Louis smiles, and it’s right on the edge of manic and exhausted. ‘I want to go home, Li.’ He presses closer to Liam, licking his lip and Liam swallows because absolutely nothing good can come from the look Louis is giving him. He rises on his toes and slides his mouth against the shell of Liam’s ear. ‘I want to go back to bed and finish what we started before we left.’

Yep, nothing good. Liam struggles not to think about Louis’s mouth and the way he gripped Liam’s hips in bed.

‘We did finish it, Lou,’ Liam says, dumbly, but in his defence his mind has emptied out everything save the image of Louis half naked.

Louis grins, dirtily, ‘Yes, we did, but we can start it all over it again, if we want.’

A laughs escapes Liam, soft and low, and god, he’s so ridiculously gone for Louis. He moves his hand from under Louis’s jacket and slide it up his back into his hair, scratching just how he likes. Louis sighs and drops his head onto Liam’s shoulder, eyes fluttering. His hands play with Liam’s shirt cuffs, fingers sliding through the little slip of material brushing against Liam’s skin. 

Liam exhales slowly, ‘You know we can’t leave yet.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

You just don’t skip out on a party Simon fucking Cowell throws _for you_ in honour of _your next world tour_. You just don’t. At least not an hour and a half in. 

He goes to say something along those lines when Niall burst into view. Liam practically has to blink; Niall’s smile is so wide. He’s got a pint in one hand and a cake in the other. His eyes flit to Louis and his smile flickers, softens. ‘He okay?’ Louis only thinks he has a poker face, but really his eyebrows give everything away. Especially to them.

Louis opens his eyes. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, babe; just tipsy, tired, and horny.’

Liam snorts, feeling his cheek flush a little. Bloody Louis. That hadn’t been quite how Liam was going to phrase the situation, as accurate as it is.

Niall, bless him, only laughs. ‘You and half the party, mate!’

Louis grins then pouts, shifting against Liam. He’s practically climbing up Liam’s side. ‘Yeah, but they can actually do something about it, I _can’t_ you know.’ 

Niall looks between Liam and Louis and shrugs in both apology and understanding. ‘Yeah, that is pretty shit.’ Liam smiles at Niall and nudges him in the shoulder a little. Niall seems about to step into their space and Liam is already raising his other arm to pull him into a cuddle when he snaps back, face lighting up. 

‘Wait right here, lads! I’ve got a plan!’

Niall’s gone before Liam can blinks. Louis’s amused _uh-oh_ does not reassure him. 

He tries to follow Niall with his eyes and does a pretty good job of it until Niall slides up to Harry’s side, both of them completely ignoring the person Harry was talking to, and whispers something in Harry’s ear. From across the room Liam can see Harry perk up and look around before his eyes land on Liam and Louis. He grins madly over at them and Liam feels more than a little confused. He turns to Louis, who’s cuddled closer to him, chin hooked onto Liam’s shoulder, and is always the best Harry translator to have around. 

‘What did that mean?’

‘Seems our boys are plotting something.’ The energy around Louis has subdued some, part of it somehow attached to whatever the hell is it Niall and now Harry are planning. Both who have disappeared into the crowd of people by the time Liam looks back round.

Liam rolls his eyes, ‘Obviously. D’you know what it is?’

Louis shrugs, ‘I think they’re trying to keep us guessing, but from Harry’s smile I reckon it involves some public indecency.’

Liam has a think on that for a couple minutes. ‘Involving us?’

‘Most likely.’ There’s a sly and proud edge to Louis’s voice that Liam should not find charming.

And then Zayn pops up by Liam’s side, almost startling him, one hand going around Liam’s next as he leans in close enough that the smell of his aftershave wafts over them. Zayn always smells so nice. He looks mischievous, brown eyes twinkling in a way that, were he a different person, Liam would be profoundly jealous of how his eyes do that. 

‘Come with me if you want to live,’ Zayn waggles his eyebrows. Liam can’t help but chuckle at the reference but before he can ask Zayn what’s he talking about Liam is being pulled forward, which of course means Louis is being pulled with him, plastered at his side.

‘Zayn?’ Liam questions, because what the hell are these crazy bastards planning. 

Zayn only leads them across the room, past some people, through another room and suddenly there’s Niall and Harry chatting near some glass doors. Everyone is looking at them like they’re twin suns orbiting each other and they all want to get close enough to touch. At Liam’s side Louis starts giggling and Liam frowns. 

‘Wait, what’s happening?’

Zayn turns his head only to give Liam one spectacular eye roll and whispers, ‘It’s not like I could say “come with with me if you want to get off”, so come _on_.’ 

Oh. _Oh._

These ridiculous boys. He should have known. He loves them so much.

Liam meets Louis’s eyes and they’re bright with the same mischievousness that’s in Zayn’s. His cheeks are flushed and he looks so lovely and happy and proud. Liam grins back. He wants to go to Niall and Harry and kiss them because of what they’re doing for them, just so he and Louis have a this bit of time to themselves in this sea of people. 

Too late the thought comes that he could just do that. (Not to mention would, he realises, ruin the plan.)

The air is sharp and cold but refreshing as the heat of the party leaves them behind. Zayn pushes them towards the far side of the balcony and starts fumbling in his pockets.

‘ _Now_ , I’ll be here having smoke and you two are keeping me company. Niall and Harry are keeping anyone from following out,’ he looks up through his lashes, cheeky smile in place in place. ‘And those were all euphemisms, expect the bit where I’m actually having a smoke since it’s bloody cold out here.’ He pulls out a dented pack of cigarettes and lighter. He also pulls out his phone and Liam can tell from the way he’s scrolling he’s calling Perrie, who is still on tour. 

Zayn, in a show of perceived privacy and false modesty turns his back on them and Liam looks back at Louis. The lightning is low, and Zayn’s right, it is bloody cold, but Louis’s smile is wide and suddenly all that energy that seemed to be stifling him, _them_ , inside feels loose in the best way. He’s not sure who moves first, but their giggles get caught between their mouths. Louis’s already cooling hands cup his cheeks and pulls Liam’s face down as Liam cups the back of his head, his other arm tight around Louis’s waist.

It might be cold out but Louis’s mouth is slick and hot.

There’s a potted plant by them and they almost upturn it as Liam pushes Louis against the wall behind it - Zayn’s snort of laughter is barely registers and later Liam will be grateful that in the expected retelling of the story Zayn has always been more gentle when teasing Liam - mouth hard against Louis’s, because he wants Louis to know he’s been thinking about this too. He’s always thinking about this. 

Against his mouth, Louis murmurs, ‘After this, _home_.’ He’s pressing his hips against Liams, slotting and sliding them together. 

Liam nods, teeth closing over Louis’s bottom lip. ‘Home, yeah.’ _Yeah_.

*

 

*

Then they have a Thursday off.

A whole, 36 hour stretch between leaving the rehearsals and reporting back for final clothes fittings, which are always a nightmare, because they don’t just have to fit their own clothes - they have to fit each other’s. Forward planning. 

It’s supposed to give them time to put their affairs in order, like they’re dying at the weekend, then there’s the Friday of meetings and final meetings and last minute meetings; this always happens when someone at management realises they’re really going on tour, absolutely going on tour, and in two days. Then they’ll spend the weekend at the rehearsals, building up to the venue check. Which is the sodding O2 arena, has Louis mentioned that, because that’s what it is, and it’s going to be full. Of twenty thousand people. To see them. It’s never, ever going to be less than awesome, in the scary, big sense of the word.

Madison Square Gardens was that and the thought makes Louis swallow and turn in the bed to lie flat, eyeing the ceiling, stomach churning. He’s looking at the subtle pattern on the wallpaper - thin grey stripes with the occasional thin line of red - on Liam’s bedroom ceiling and trying to draw stick figures on the lines, seeing how many he can count to before the mental image disintegrates.

He doesn’t get near twenty thousand.

He remembers the noise, so loud it filled the air like a physical weight and crackled like the static of a breaking storm, drowning out their earpieces and leaving them grinning, dumbly, before they remembered they had to _speak._ There wasn’t an arm not shaking when they tried to block it out, the five of them, in a circle with their backs to a wall of noise.

The O2 isn’t very much bigger, but how it _looms_ again.

Louis remembers the pictures on the news, in the papers lying around the house, of the Millenium Dome. He remembers how every school talked about going to the damn thing. He remembers that it was huge enough for some Bond villain wannabes to plot a _jewel heist_ there, for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of sparkling things, and how the geniuses had driven into a bulldozer into the dome in the attempt.

A bulldozer.

Like it was some kind of film, only with idiotic robbers.

He couldn’t picture the inside of the Millenium Dome when he was a kid, but he could see a bulldozer, and for something to be big enough that it could take one of those to its side, it had to be massive, like a spaceship. And he’s part of a band that’s about to fill it twice over.

Louis shakes his head violently. This is exactly the kind of thinking that, if it were written on another of the lads’ faces, he’d aim a tackle in their direction until they laughed it off or left it on the floor.

He fumbles for the phone that he swears he left on the - his? - bedside table. It’s ridiculous how _competent_ Liam is at being one half of a couple; his bedroom is set up like he expects someone to share it, someone to have a side of the bed that’s theirs and to be steady enough in their attendance to need tiny drawers, a lamp that they can reach if Liam falls asleep first and room enough to abandon electricals, reading glasses or a book beside it. 

At his place, Louis’s bed is pushed as far against the wall as it would go. His first priority, when he moved in, was floor space to pile up boxes and later, as much room as he could get for tumbling, acrobatics, occasional breakdancing and throwing things. 

Liam doesn’t even seem to realise he’s leaving a hundred little spaces for Louis to fill up, but Louis turns on his side and slides his eyes from his phone’s screen to the little table, and there they are, cluttering up the neat lines and stripes: a tangle of a discarded charger, a travel guide to Miami, and Louis’s glasses.

Louis isn’t sure what Liam likes best about the glasses: Louis wearing them, Louis falling asleep and having to have them gently taken off and folded on the bedside table, or the fact that Liam and the lads are the only ones who see him wearing them these days. Frankly, it’s rehabilitating the hated things for Louis, and giving him ideas about how Liam would feel about Louis in glasses and not a lot else.

Thinking about all of the sex they’re not having (yet) is enough to make Louis groan and he thinks he must be louder than a crowd of twenty thousand. There’s no way even twenty thousand random individuals put together could feel as frustrated as he does. None. He knows Jesus gave the five thousand bread and fish, but Louis wishes He would see fit to grace him with breadcrumbs before Louis accidentally tries to seduce Liam in a rehearsal or something.

(He can hear a voice in his head that sounds like Niall scoffing and asking him what else is new. He tells it to shut the fuck up, thank you very much.)

The thought is enough to get him out of the bed that smells like them both and feels on the edge of too hot, with the door shut and curtains closed over on a sunny day.

There’s a tea bag in a cup in the kitchen when he finds his way there - it’s not easy with his eyes closed half the time and rubbing at them in the sudden brightness for the other half - and the butter left out on the counter. Liam is a prince.

He is also singing.

Louis scrabbles for the toast he dropped, butter side down, of course. It’s not that Louis is usually rendered useless by Liam singing - they’d have bigger problems than their dancing skills if he was.

But.

This isn’t Liam belting out the top notes to an audience, hand stretching out to the masses like the trained competent popstar he is, sitting on top of the harmonies and the band easy as pie. This is Liam’s ridiculous voice lazily bubbling across bits and pieces of their songs and songs they’ve covered, wandering between their harmony lines to better settle his own, repeating the jump between two different notes four times while Louis tries to put his toast on a plate without breaking anything. This is Liam dragging his tongue around the notes in his solos and verses, seeing where the rhythm can chop and shift and where it needs to sit. This is Liam, at half-volume, with some of the polished edge left off and singing along to his ipod so he doesn’t wake Louis up.

Louis swallows the tea a bit too quickly, but fuck it, he needs the steadying effect of caffeine, especially when Liam flickers between humming along and softly chiming in on one of their stadium-friendly _oh-oh-oh_ bridges.

_Fuck,_ Louis thinks, and turns, face warm. He’s heading to the bedroom to grab a t-shirt, since he’s still in a pair of loose-fitting pyjama bottoms, when he stops at the acoustic guitar Liam has against the wall in the hall. He picks it up, partly because it hides the erection he got _listening to Liam sing_ since it sits lower on him, and that’s going to be awkward if it’s habit-forming, and partly because the way Liam’s singing takes him back to their writing day trips (in Sweden, in Bulgaria, in Ireland), when Liam would hand him the guitar with a blush and they’d sing their way around half-written songs. It’s always taken Louis an extra inhale to sing with the lads, but eventually, that was least the case with Liam, who always looked so delighted when he did, and Louis does like to please.

Louis listens as Liam’s voice trails off and he hears the quiet sound of rain on the windows, or rather, Liam’s fingers flying across his laptop keyboard, which does not deserve the abuse he gives it.

_liam are you okay are you okay leee-yum  
liam are you okay are you okay liam_

Liam looks up and then back to his screen as Louis uses the heel of his hand to beat the choppy rhythm out on the guitar, swiping across the strings the way Harry would roughly slice rather than finely dice a vegetable. Louis’s voice is still half asleep and the rest, he probably screwed over by drinking the world’s hottest tea to distract himself from the world’s hottest boy. The corners of Liam’s mouth twitch.

_liam are you okay are you okay leee-yum  
liam are you okay are you okay liam_

The corners of his mouth twitch again and Louis leans his back against the doorway between the kitchen and living room. Louis adds some actual slides down the neck of the guitar, because he’s an annoying fuck when he wants to be.

He loops it back one more time, while Liam taps his keys and does his best not to look at Louis, through his left knee is suspiciously bouncing along.

‘You know, I could listen to you sing like that all day.’

Louis’s left hand slides too far on a chord and it lands like a comedy thump. 

The words are the shape of a witty comeback but Liam’s got the tone all wrong, Louis thinks distantly, much too sincere. Get him in trouble someday, sounding earnest and achey like that. 

Louis slips the guitar strap over his head and leans it against the arm of the couch Liam isn’t sitting on. Liam watches him as Louis walks to stand in front of Liam, who’s set the laptop aside, waits a second, then falls forward. Liam’s hands snap up to catch him by the hips as Louis finds the outside of his thighs with the insides of his own, and puts his hands on Liam’s shoulders. 

‘Smooth,’ Liam says, looking up at him with a slightly guarded grin that reminds Louis painfully of talking to Harry. _He’s learning; let him get used to the hardware God gave you before you break out the whips._

It’s already bad enough that Liam makes him hard as fuck and makes his heart beat a little too fast at times but then he makes Louis laugh and the room gets too warm and woobly around him. He’s actually disturbingly sure that Liam’s hands at the only thing holding him up. 

‘You caught me though,’ he leans his weight further onto Liam’s hands. Liam smirks at the joke and his hold doesn’t even falter. That is... such horrible information to have. It is not helping his situation at all. But it’s not as if it’s even a surprise. Liam’s always been able to carry the extra weight of everything they don’t want to deal with and he never falters under it. Or at least it’s always seemed that way. Louis wonders if Liam’s feeling every inch of what Saturday will mean to them. 

Was that why Liam was signing soft and loose in the morning? 

Louis wants to ask. He’s not sure how to get the question out. 

He slides his knees closer and reaches down to move the laptop further away from Liam before returning his hands to Liam’s shoulders. His elbows bend, their hold on Louis’s hips holding steady and Louis has never been so grateful for it, settling on Liam’s lap. 

‘Liam, are you okay?’ he half sings, thumbs rubbing small circles at the side of Liam’s neck. 

The way Liam’s eyes get all bright and soft only make him want to kiss him but Louis holds off, for a second, he wants his answer first. It’s also probably no secret to Liam he’s still half hard, but well, it’s not like Liam’s jogging bottoms are hiding much either.

‘It’s big, isn’t it?’ Liam’s hands settle on the small of Louis’s back, like they always do, like it’s their favourite place. 

Louis swallows the dirty joke that just popped in his head because he does have some sense and maybe it’s not the time for penis jokes. ‘Whatever do you mean?’ he wiggles them closer. Well, he did say _some_ sense.

Liam smiles at him like he knows what Louis is doing, but doesn’t mind, and sinks back on the couch, neck curving over the back of it. Louis stays mostly upright, happily studying how Liam’s lashes flutter close and then his eyes meet Louis’s straight on. 

‘The O2, s’big, you know? Remember when we were sitting on the stage and it’s just-- It’s big. Even in New York I didn’t-- It didn’t feel as big as this, did it?’

Louis shakes his head silently. He remembers that day during rehearsals. It was near the end and Niall, Zayn, and Harry were hopping around behind them. Liam and Louis had dropped down at opposite edges of the stage, kicking their legs like little kids. For a second it had felt absolutely and utterly unreal. 

A dream sequence, and to think that that space would be filled with the sounds of their fans, screaming for them, supporting them when they were just really only a bunch of lads who got so extremely lucky, it had been too big in that moment. He had looked over to Liam, who had been looking at him for some reason, and Louis could see everything he was feeling in Liam’s face. He’d made a joke, a small one, not that funny at all and he doesn’t even remember it, but Liam had smiled and the bigness of that moment had been reduced to Liam’s smile.


End file.
